Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
Webinar on Personal Injury Costs 2025
Webinar on personal injury costs from Kings Chambers Andrew Hogan and Craig Ralph, discussing current developments in hourly rates, deductions from damages, mediation and ADR, and other topics of interest.
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Law Society Model CFA
The new edition of the White Book was recently published. This year we purchased the online firmwide edition which comes bundled together with Volume 2. It is a number of years since I had seen Volume 2. This includes a section on costs and funding containing various reference resources such ...
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Webinar on costs in planning appeals
What happens after an award of costs in a planning appeal? Costs webinar from Kings Chambers’ Andrew Hogan discussing how a claim for costs is formulated, how it is assessed, and how the court determines the amount of costs a paying party has to pay.
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Fixed costs where Defendant’s Part 36 offer accepted late
There is stiff competition as to which part of the new(ish) rules concerning Fixed Recoverable Costs (FRC) have been most poorly drafted. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to find a more confusing set of provisions than those surrounding late acceptance of a defendant’s Part 36 offer. The problems stem from ...
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Guideline Hourly Rates 2025
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
“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
“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
“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
“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?
“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?
“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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