I write about legal costs, litigation funding and related questions arising in civil litigation. The emphasis is practical: what the authorities mean, how the rules operate and where the real risks lie.
The latest articles appear below. If you are looking for a particular area, the four broad gateways provide a quicker route into the archive.
Costs
Commercial costs, Part 36, QOCS, detailed assessment and related costs issues.
Litigation Funding
Funding agreements, ATE insurance, security for costs and the economics of litigation.
Solicitor-Client & Retainers
Solicitors Act assessments, retainers, CFAs, DBAs, success fees and deductions from damages.
Group & Specialist Litigation
Collective proceedings, group litigation and selected wider developments affecting civil justice.
Recent analysis
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Bending the rules
I have lost count of the number of decisions in the last three years, on various aspects of the rules prescribing fixed costs or governing part 36. Sometimes it has appeared that on an almost monthly basis, an important case has been handed down, which establishes a new set of principles. On a conservative estimate…
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High crimes and misdemeanours
One of the books I read over the summer was by the Secret Barrister: in essence a polemic on the criminal justice system: I rather enjoyed it and you can find her blog here: https://thesecretbarrister.com. It would be wrong to think however, that all criminal cases are publically funded and suffer from the sort of…
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The winds of winter
Last month the Lord Chancellor suffered another defeat in the High Court in the case of R v The Lord Chancellor on application of the Law Society [2018] EWHC 2094 (Admin) which concerned a judicial review brought by the Law Society, into the legality of a reduction in criminal legal aid payments under the Litigators Graduated Fees…
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Making retainers work
A colleague at the Bar recently asked me what I actually did on a day to day basis, having some vague idea presumably, that the role of costs counsel was to travel the country arguing about 6 minute slivers of time. In point of fact, on reflection perhaps the largest part of what I do,…
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Death by acronym
Today the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in the case of Cartwright v Venduct Engineering Limited [2018] EWCA Civ 1654. The sole substantive judgment was provided by Coulson LJ, now of course the Deputy Head of Civil Justice. The result of the appeal is to uphold the decision of Regional Costs Judge Hale made…
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1Q18
One of my favourite series of books in recent years, is the sequence 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, in which his protagonist makes a wrong turn and leaves the real world, and slips into a parallel one, where everything is subtly different, stranger and more sinister. Over three books she seeks to return to her own world.…
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The mills of god
Over the last 20 years, I have dealt with every conceivable type of litigation in every conceivable court and tribunal. One area of work that has consistently enabled my starving little ones to eat, has been credit hire litigation. For various reasons there is a considerable overlap between credit hire and costs litigation. Students of…
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The philosophers’ stone
I have long thought that perhaps the most valuable commodity in the world is information. In the twenty first century, pieces of data, placed in the correct context and disseminated to the right user for whom they have a particular value, despite having no material weight or tangible presence, can be transmuted into money with an ease that the seekers…