Legal Costs

The Law Society Gazette recently reported: “NHS lawyers warned the government before it published its bill on legal aid reform that scrapping legal aid for clinical negligence claims would ‘massively’ escalate NHS legal costs, and leave some seriously injured people unable to bring cases. … The body, which is responsible for handling claims against the […]

I don’t want to sound like a stuck record, but the inconsistent, and often incoherent, anti-Jackson rhetoric shows no signs of abating. The Access to Justice Action Group (AJAG) recently issued a press release with the headline “Jackson reforms set to costs NHS £105.55 million”. Now, you’ve never seen such a selective and garbled use

Another podcast from the Hailsham Chambers Annual Costs Group Seminar. Here is the Champerty and Contingency Fees session:

We’ve been exploring some of the problems with the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and how this may reduce claimants’ damages by rather more than 25% in personal injury cases. The situation becomes even more dire for non-personal injury claims. In relation to a professional negligence claim against, for example, an architect,

Another podcast from the Hailsham Chambers Annual Costs Group Seminar. Here is the Fast Track Costs Issues session:

Hailsham Chambers have produced a series of podcasts of their latest Annual Costs Group Seminar. Highly recommended. Here is the Jackson Update:

On Saturday I ran a workshop, together with specialist costs counsel Mark Friston, at the Bar Council’s Bar Contracting Conference on the impact of Jackson implementation for the Bar. I had not previously given much thought to this aspect of the proposals but it has thrown up some very interesting problems which I’ll share with

I recently mentioned the fact that the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill seemed to be strangely silent as to qualified one-way costs shifting, the 10% general damages uplift or proportionality changes. I am therefore grateful to Kerry Underwood for pointing out that the Government has made it clear that only the changes

The Ministry of Justice has been busy setting up its new website containing information previously held on the Courts Service website. All well and good but it means the location of everything has changed and some information has been consigned to an archive website (again with different locations). This has meant that many of the

Master Hurst has ruled in Motto & Others v Trafigura (SCCO, 29/06/2011) (click for judgment) that in a CFA funded case interest on costs should not begin to run until costs have been assessed, rather than the earlier date when judgment is given. This follows earlier decisions reaching the same conclusion, although not necessarily for