Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
Guideline Hourly Rates 2025
January 8, 2025
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The latest guideline hourly rates, increased in accordance with the Services Producer Price Index (SPPI), came into force from 1 January 2025. Grade Fee earner London 1 London 2 London 3 National 1 National 2 A Solicitors and legal executives with over 8 years’ experience £566 (£546) £413 (£398) £312 (£301) £288 ...
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William Wyatt, MBE
January 6, 2025
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Congratulations to William Wyatt, one of the founding partners of Gibbs Wyatt Stone, for being awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) in the King’s New Year Honours List 2025. The award was made for services to disabled people. William has worked tirelessly for disabled people learning to swim, through ...
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Webinar on non-party costs orders
November 22, 2024
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Costs webinar from Kings Chambers’ Andrew Hogan and Steven Turner reviewing the law, practice and procedure relating to non-party costs orders in the context of recent case law.
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How to avoid being referred to the SRA
November 18, 2024
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The recent decision in Kapoor v Johal, Johal & Johal [2024] EWHC 2853 (SCCO), where a claim for costs was reduced from £258,583.78 to £0, has received a significant amount of attention, including in the Law Society Gazette, Solicitors Journal, Legal Futures, Civil Litigation Brief and Costs Lawyer Journal. I suspect ...
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£258,583.78 Bill of Costs assessed at £0 for misconduct
November 11, 2024
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The recent decision of Costs Judge James in Kapoor v Johal, Johal & Johal [2024] EWHC 2853 (SCCO) is a relatively rare example of the Court not only exercising its powers under CPR 44.11, but this resulting in a complete disallowance of all costs claimed within the Bill of Costs. ...
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Retainer challenges under the Consumer Rights Act 2015
October 30, 2024
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Interesting costs webinar from Gatehouse Chambers’ Costs and Litigation Funding Team examining the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in light of the recent decision in Glaser v Atay [2024] EWCA Civ 1111. That case determined that the Direct Access barristers’ terms did not comply with the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and that the contract was ...
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Oakwood Solicitors Ltd v Menzies
October 24, 2024
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In Oakwood Solicitors Ltd v Menzies [2024] UKSC 34 the Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeal’s earlier decision. In essence, it is not sufficient to have a retainer that allows for costs to be deducted from damages and for a final bill to be sent to the client at ...
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Transitional provisions for Fixed Recoverable Costs (again)
October 22, 2024
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This blog has looked many times at the drafting error in The Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 2) Rules 2023 concerning the transitional provisions and Fixed Recoverable Costs. These state that the new rules “only apply to a claim where proceedings are issued on or after 1st October 2023”. This is despite ...
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Numbering PDF page numbers for electronic court bundles
August 7, 2024
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The Practice Direction on Administrative Court Bundle Guidance explains how PDF bundles should be numbered: “All bundles must be paginated in ascending order from start to finish. The first page of the PDF will be numbered “1”, and so on. (Any original page numbers of documents within the bundle are ...
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Appropriate grade of fee earner to draft witness statement
July 29, 2024
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“In general, there is an expectation that the first draft of a witness statement can be undertaken by lower grade fee earners including Grade C solicitors and legal executives (and those with similar experience). This is particularly so since witness statements should, in general, be drafted in the witness’ own ...
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Budgeting for costs of JSM
July 26, 2024
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“Joint Settlement Meetings (JSM) It is not generally an objection to an allowance being made for a JSM that one or other party thinks such a meeting is unlikely to be required (unless it is clear that one will not be required or appropriate). It can be budgeted for on ...
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Appropriate grade of fee earner to attend trial
July 24, 2024
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“Level of fee earner. Issues might arise as to the seniority of the fee earner attending trial if a solicitor’s attendance is reasonably required. But even in high value cases it may not be reasonable for a senior solicitor to attend throughout a trial.” – from Costs Judge Simon Brown’s ...
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Budgeting for PTR in King’s Bench
July 22, 2024
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“In general in the KB a PTR is not considered necessary and often costs of 2/3 hours are allowed to deal with issues relating to listing and associated matters together with a listing fee where appropriate.” – from Costs Judge Simon Brown’s Note on costs budgeting in the King’s Bench ...
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Do experts need to attend conferences in person?
July 19, 2024
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“Consultations/conference with experts In some, if not many, cases these can be conducted by videolink without the need for experts to incur travel expenses or to spend time travelling. Whether allowance should be made for attendance of an expert in person is however case sensitive. It is recognised that where, ...
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Does costs budgeting assume dispute between experts at trial?
July 17, 2024
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“The court, in general, assumes that in all cases where parties have instructed different experts there will be, and will remain up to an including trial, a dispute between the experts. If and to the extent that there is no substantial or material dispute between the experts following service of ...
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Duty to provide breakdown of medical agency fees
July 12, 2024
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Is a receiving party required to provide a breakdown between the cost of an expert report and the costs of a medical reporting organisation (“MRO”) approached to provide the report, or is it permissible for the receiving party to submit a bill which simply includes the fee charged by the ...
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Is work preparing hearing and trial bundles chargeable?
July 10, 2024
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“The assembling and pagination of bundles are generally to be regarded as administrative or secretarial tasks the costs of which are taken into account within the hourly rate of the fee earners involved; it is not generally separately chargeable (cf work done on preparing an index and deciding what documents ...
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The cost of reviewing medical records and preparing trial bundles
July 8, 2024
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“In most cases solicitors can be expected to keep a running electronic bundle of documents which can be bookmarked and added to as and when new documentation is made available. This is so even in document heavy cases (perhaps particularly so in such cases). This bundle can then be edited ...
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Appropriate grade of fee earner to obtain medical records
July 4, 2024
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“Typically, junior grade D fee earners are, for instance, involved in obtaining medical records from medical providers (and the substantial involvement of higher grade fee earners in this task may be unreasonable).” – from Costs Judge Simon Brown’s Note on costs budgeting in the King’s Bench involving high value personal ...
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