Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
Legal Costs Blog
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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.
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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” ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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. ...
Read More
I must be hallucinating
In a recent speech, the Master of the Rolls suggested that the day may soon come when lawyers may be negligent if they fail to use generative artificial intelligence. Costs Counsel Andrew Hogan has been writing some interesting blog posts about the use of ChatGPT and shown some impressive looking ...
Read More
Can you enforce an order for an interim costs payment on account?
Where the court orders a payment on account of costs, can that order be enforced? At this stage, the costs themselves have not yet been assessed. All that has been ordered is an interim amount until the actual amount due is determined. The note at 70.1.3 of the White Book ...
Read More
Litigants in person and fixed recoverable costs
CPR 45.4 governs the costs payable to a litigant in person where it is a matter which would otherwise be subject to fixed recoverable costs (i.e. costs under Section VI, Section VII or Section VIII of Part 45). In this situation, costs will be paid according to CPR 46.5 with ...
Read More
Defendant’s fixed costs when Part 36 offer accepted late
I have previously written about the discrepancy between the Fixed Recoverable Costs a claimant and a defendant may recover for the same period. This is as a consequence of a combination of CPR 45.45(1)(a)(iv), CPR 45.50(2)(b)(iv) CPR 45.6(2) and (3). A claimant’s costs are set by reference to the damages ...
Read More
Fixed costs and deemed orders for costs
Acceptance of a Part 36 offer creates a deemed order for costs. Right? Not necessarily. So far as relevant: CPR 44.9 “(1) Subject to paragraph (2), where a right to costs arises under – … (b) rule 36.13(1) or (2) (claimant’s entitlement to costs where a Part 36 offer is ...
Read More
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Join 559 other subscribers.
Archives
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Join 559 other subscribers.
