Report comment

Please fill in the form to report an unsuitable comment. Please state which comment is of concern and why. It will be sent to our moderator for review.

Comment

Quote ‘Looking at cases settled post Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 we have not noticed a significant impact on this relationship.’

Most clin neg sols on CFAs used to get 80% success fees if they entered into the CFA early enough and large premiums - either staged or RSA Pursuit premiums charged at 90% of the opponents costs and own disbursements. The no longer recoverable success fees and ATE policies therefore accounted for roughly 50% of costs pre LASPO.

Why therefore have post LASPO costs not dropped by 50%?

Hourly rates have not increased since 2010 so that is not the reason. The additional hurdles of costs budgeting and stricter proportionality test now apply so no change there. The courts even recently decided it wasn't reasonable for a London based solicitor to charge London rates on a provincial clin neg case (the Wraith rule has been ignored in the SCCO for a long time previously)

So the question is how have costs without success fees and ATE policies doubled to keep costs at the same level they were pre LASPO?

It seems strange to me. Almost like it isn't true... but it must be as surely the gov and those who pay the clin neg costs would not try to mislead anyone.

Your details

Cancel