Costs Round-Up #34

Welcome to a round-up of legal costs news

Proportionality was in the headlines again this week with a clinical negligence decision that saw costs slashed by two-thirds prompting Kerry Underwood to comment is his review of the decision in Hobbs –v- Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust that

“proportionality is meaningless, incapable of sensible definition and therefore its imposition is arbitrary and unfair.”

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In “You’re as bad as each other: no-one is getting any costs”, Barrister Gordon Exall provides his comment on GMB Minerals Engineering Consultants v GB Holdings Ltd which saw Mr Justice Fraser complain that the case  “could be the very antithesis of costs effective and efficient litigation”.  Strong words indeed.

Legal Aid Providers will be interested in Labour’s new proposal to set up a legal aid commission “to hear and take evidence on the impact of legal aid reforms”.  The story was widely reported in the newspapers earlier in the year and is explained in more detail here.

It seems that Labour plan to produce a draft report on the legal aid crisis by April 2016 and acknowledge that they did not offer enough on access to justice at the last general election.

This week, Jeremy Corbyn is quoted in the Solicitors’ Journal as saying

“Any lawyer relying solely on legal aid as an income is going to be in a very difficult position.”

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Until next week