Legal Costs

Claim with total value of £1.1 million. The claimant’s costs budget was in the sum of £821,000 odd together with VAT and the defendant’s cost budget was in the sum of £616,000. Case management hearing devoted solely to costs management. Judge concludes that the costs shown in the costs budgets are disproportionate and unreasonable. Judge […]

I was recently contacted by a company in Pakistan offering to prepare schedule of costs and Bill of costs. Apparently they have worked for several UK legal costing services. My first thought was how do they deal with the logistics of obtaining the solicitors’ file of papers? Then it dawned on me. All these schedules

The mantra currently running through the legal profession is: “Get big, get niche or get out.” This is a big issue in the field of personal injury with the advent of ABSs. This view is not universally held, there are those such as Kerry Underwood who passionately believe in the traditional law firm model. Nevertheless,

The former chief whip Mr Mitchell is suing the Sun newspaper for reporting that he called police officers “plebs”. It has now been announced that Toby Rowland, the police officer at the centre of the row, is in turn to sue Mr Mitchell for libel, presumably on the basis that Mr Mitchell wrongly said the

The Jackson reforms have led to a significant increase in fixed fees in personal injury litigation. The judiciary has already made threatening noises that if the Jackson reforms do not work it may be necessary to scrap the current hourly rates system entirely. But, who would have thought that the threat would come from within?

The following question and answer appeared in the Judicial Line section of the recent edition of New Law Journal: Q Is there power for the court to apply the multi-track costs budget regime to pre-1 April 2013 claims? A The costs management powers in the CPR (r 3.12 et seq) only apply to multi-track cases

There was much fuss when the new portal fees were being proposed. Karl Tonks, previous president of APIL, said: “Lawyers cannot reasonably be expected to run cases at a loss. But if the proposed fees are implemented, the only alternative will be to turn claimants away or take legal fees from a claimant’s damages, which

The Court of Appeal has unanimously dismissed the appeal in the costs budgeting case of Mitchell v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 1526 (part of the “Plebgate” saga). Although the decision is itself crucially important for costs budgeting purposes – fail to serve and file a budget on time and your costs will

The recent case of Vitol Bahrain EC v Nasdec General Trading LLC and others [2013] All ER (D) 38 (Nov) provides an interesting insight into how the courts may interpret proportionality under the new test. The matter related to an interim anti-suit injunction to prevent the defendants from pursuing any application to join the claimant

The Civil Justice Council’s Costs Committee is currently undertaking a review into Guideline Hourly Rates. As part of that process they are considering whether to introduce a further category of fee earner for costs lawyers and costs clerks (their term not mine). If this is done, will costs lawyers be placed in a higher category