Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
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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Duty to provide breakdown of medical agency fees
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?
“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
“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
“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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Costs webinar on costs in clinical negligence cases
Costs webinar from Kings Chambers’ Andrew Hogan and Kevin Latham reviewing current issues in clinical negligence costs, including fixed costs, the increasing trend towards ADR, hourly rates and deductions for success fees and ATE premiums from protected parties and children’s damages.
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Fixed Trial Costs if case removed from list and then re-listed
So far, since the extension of Fixed Recoverable Costs (FRC), there have probably been very few, if any, cases which have gone as far as trial. Unfortunately, once there are, we will start to see all kinds of problems arise because of yet another case of poor drafting. When the ...
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Fellow Costs Lawyer
The Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL) is consulting on creating a new membership category: Fellow Costs Lawyer. I fear there is some muddled thinking behind this. The right to use the term “Costs Lawyer” comes from completing the relevant training and holding a current practising certificate issued by the Costs ...
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Solicitors Remuneration Certificate
I was recently asked to review some invoices a client had received from their solicitors. At the bottom of each invoice the client was advised of their right under “the Solicitors Remuneration Order 1972” to require the solicitors to “obtain a Certificate from the Law Society stating that in their ...
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Cap on success fee in personal injury claims
It has generally been understood that Conditional Fee Agreements in relation to personal injury claims, in proceedings at first instance, must limit the success fee that can be charged to the client to 25% of (a) general damages for pain, suffering, and loss of amenity and (b) damages for pecuniary ...
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Fixed fee transitional provisions for non-personal injury claims
The Civil Procedure Rule Committee’s decision to refuse to admit they made a drafting error in relation to the transitional provisions concerning Fixed Recoverable Costs for non-personal injury claims is regrettable. Not only is it likely to generate unnecessary satellite litigation due to the uncertainty it has created, it is ...
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Departing from fixed recoverable costs
Under the new Fixed Recoverable Costs regime, there are various exceptions where the court may allow an amount greater than the specified fixed costs. In particular: The Court may consider a claim for an amount of costs which is greater than the fixed recoverable costs where there are “exceptional circumstances” ...
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2024 Law Society Model Conditional Fee Agreement
For many years the Law Society provided a model conditional fee agreement for use in personal injury and clinical negligence cases. This was updated from time to time. The last version was updated in 2014 and, even then, appears to have been a temporary job as the header to the ...
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Costs webinar on Kenig v Thomson Snell and Passmore LLP
Costs webinar from Kings Chambers’ Matthew Smith and Paul Hughes discussing how the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Kenig v Thomson Snell and Passmore LLP [2024] EWCA Civ 15 affects the way that solicitors ought to perform retainers dealing with the administration of estates and the likelihood and ...
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Costs of attendance at rehabilitation case management meetings
The Court of Appeal’s decision in Hadley v Przybylo [2024] EWCA Civ 250 is something of a curiosity. It overturned the earlier decision of Master McCloud who had decided, as a matter of principle, a fee earner’s attendance at rehabilitation case management meetings was an irrecoverable cost in the litigation. ...
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