Author name: Simon Gibbs

The costs of taking a costs dispute all the way to a full detailed assessment hearing can be ridiculously expensive and the outcome incredibly difficult to predict. The idea of mediation in costs disputes therefore has considerable merit, although I’ve yet to try it myself. Philip Hesketh has been offering a mediation service specifically for

I am still recovering from a run of detailed assessment hearings in the Senior Courts Costs Office. (Yes, I do sometimes do some real work.) A number of these cases have gone part heard but these were the outcomes in the other claims: 1. Bill of costs in first case reduced from £87,279 to £47,461.

The Chair of the LSB’s consumer panel has called for an increased focus on quality in the provision in legal services. Dianne Hayter said that a lack of checking of the quality of work, and “light touch” requirements for lawyers to show continuing competence, suggested that regulators as well as consumers were making “heroic assumptions”

A recent article in The Economist (see link) discussed the phenomenon that in rich countries since the 1990s employment in middle-income jobs has begun to decline as a share of the total whilst the share of both low and high-skilled jobs has risen. The article speculates that the reason for this change is the development

On 23rd November 2010 Thirty Nine Essex Street Chambers, Ellis Grant and Feesability are hosting a conference on Costs Management in Civil Litigation (see download). Speakers include Lord Justice Jackson. Unlike some commentators, I’m not convinced that costs management is going to be the saviour of the legal costs profession. However, it is likely to

The US tax system gives various benefits to those with dependants. The more dependants, the lower the final tax bill will be. Previously, tax payers had to do no more than give the names of their dependants in their tax return to benefit. In 1987 a change was made so that tax payers had to

I see that Dr Mark Friston & Professor Dominic Regan are giving a seminar on the future of the legal marketplace and the impact of Gibbon on Part 36 settlements at the end of the month for those up North (see link).

The Ministry of Justice’s consultation paper on implementing Lord Justice Jackson’s proposals has now been published. This contains some interesting suggestions for minor amendments to Jackson’s recommendations but the main thrust of the consultation is that recoverability of success fees and ATE premiums will end combined with the introduction of qualified one-way costs shifting and