April 2013

The Legal Services Board has called on parliament to set up a single regulator for the legal services sector which would absorb all eight current frontline regulators (including the Costs Lawyer Standards Board). Iain Stark, chairman of the Association of Costs Lawyers, sensibly opposes this change and was quoted in Solicitors Journal as saying: “A […]

The other day I mentioned that with the introduction of the new form N258 – Request for Provisional/Detailed Assessment it appeared the old form N258 had been renumbered D258. However, as a reader pointed out: “I thought D258 was for family cases. Hence Applicant/ Petitioner/ Respondent appearing in the headings in the top right of

I continue to see, on a virtually daily basis, claims for costs that include work relating to funding, notwithstanding the clear judgment from the Court of Appeal. The last time I mentioned this, readers replied with comments such as: “Clients won’t let me leave it out” and “Why do the Defendant’s job for them? Keep

It was previously understood that the 25% cap on damages, excluding damages for future care and loss, that can be taken from clients in personal injury claims would include any success fee charged by a barrister also acting under a CFA. This would, in theory, have avoided the situation where the client might lose 75%

Provisional assessment is meant to take place without the judge undertaking the assessment seeing the receiving party’s file of papers. The Senior Courts Costs Office has apparently recognised that this is costs cuckoo land and will be requiring receiving parties to file their full papers in all cases (a requirement the court is permitted to

District Judge Stephen Gold has been running an excellent series of articles in the New Law Journal explaining how the Jackson reforms will work. On the subject of provisional assessment he wrote: “Once it has been carried out, the court will send out precedent G with its decisions indorsed and its decision on the costs

Kings Chambers is running a costs conference (click link) in Birmingham on 11th April 2013. Price just £25 plus VAT.

Those responsible for preparing the Court Forms have not been slow to prepare for the Jackson changes. A new N258 – Request for Provisional Detailed Assessment has been released. This is rather misleadingly titled as it also covers requests for detailed assessment where the amount claimed is over £75,000. The old N258 appears to have

Jackson Day came and went and the world carried on. (Unless, since writing this, North Korea has triggered nuclear Armageddon. In which case how are you still managing to read this and why does the latest from the Legal Costs Blog still feature on your list of priorities?) Are solicitors ready? The Law Society has