Costs round-up #27
Welcome to a round-up of news and stories for costs draftsmen and costs lawyers over the last week.
This week, the news was dominated by a single story: the new format Bill of Costs proposed by the Hutton Committee (aka the Jackson Review EW‐UTBMS Development Steering Committee) whose member list can be found here.
The new guidance document is here together with a full history of transition and a request for comments on the new proposed bill to be forwarded to alexander.huttonqc@hailshamchambers.com; david.nelson@pathfinderconsulting.com (both please) by 4pm on 18th September 2015.
Given the substantial investment that will be required to update management and billing software as well as the total investment of time to comprehend the new format bill, we suggest it would be wise to participate.
There are 13 Phase codes, 41 Task codes, and 29 Activity codes to work with.
A summary of the J-codes can be found here.
There will be a Practice Direction in force from the start of October 2015 to enable parties to use the new bill of costs in cases in the SCCO on a voluntary basis.
The Lexis-Nexis site reports that:
“The longer term plan at present is that there will be a pilot in all SSCO cases where the costs order giving rise to the right to costs has been made on or after 1st April 2016 where the new bill of costs will be the recommended form of bill in place of the existing model.”
It is of course intended that the new bill format will become the standard in all proceedings as the J-Code-set develops and that its use by all litigation practices will become compulsory.
We will keep you updated in the coming months.
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