Welcome to our weekly round-up of legal costs related news.
Let’s start with Jones v Spire Healthcare, (Case No A13YJ811, 11.9.15) in Liverpool County Court reported by Rachel Rothwell in the Law Society Gazette. It’s a retainer issue (which we costs draftsmen love) with the potential for a few sleepless nights for those Solicitor firms who found themselves in the market for PI volume work from those moving out of the business.
In this above cited case, DJ Jenkinson held that there was no enforceable retainer in this case where the Receiving Party had purchased the case from another Solicitor firm that had gone into administration. The case is on its way to the Court of Appeal.
Stephen Webber, Chair of SCIL provides his thoughts on the level of fixed fees proposed by the MOJ for clinical negligence cases in the future.
Reported in Legal Futures, Mr Webber states:
“There is no issue with fixed fees, the problem is going to be the level at which they are set. That’s going to be the problem. If they are set at a low level, there’s going to be a lot of litigants in person and a lot more work for the NHS."
“I can see a lot of firms risk-assessing cases in the future, based on the number of experts. If you’ve got a £25,000 claim and three experts, you just won’t be able to do it. If it was £100,000 and five experts, it wouldn’t be in any way profitable.”
You can read more here.
Simon Gibbs, costs lawyer provides his opinion on the requirement from 1 October 2015 to serve a breakdown of the costs claimed for each phase of the proceedings together with the Bill of Costs, where a costs management order has been made. Simon describes the requirement as “an odd one”, find out why, here.
If you are looking for entry level training on costs budgets, take a look at our e-learning course on completing costs budgets filmed in conjunction with legal training experts Kinch Robinson. You can view the video trailer here and book onto the course which you can work through at your own pace (at your own computer), here.
Today we are presenting workshops at the LAPG annual conference alongside TV Edwards Solicitors. So we couldn’t resist reporting on the bizarre tweet exchange between Mr Andrew Gurney and the Legal Aid Agency that caused a near melt down on the twitter airwaves. Read more here. We don’t anticipate a speedy reply.
Until next week.