If a law firm launched a campaign that boasted ‘we will act in your best interests and provide you with good service’, it would seem a modest boast indeed.

But making a virtue out of what should be a given is essentially what national law firm Addleshaw Goddard is managing with its ‘Contro£’ initiative, undertaking to explore a client’s options for funding litigation, including conditional fee agreements, after-the-event (ATE) insurance and third-party funding. We should stress that this is not a criticism of Addleshaw Goddard – far from it. It is an indictment of the firm’s competitors that it can stand out from the crowd this way.

The Code of Conduct requires solicitors to discuss with clients ‘whether specially purchased insurance may be obtained’ to cover adverse costs.

Are commercial litigators doing this? An Addleshaws survey of FTSE-350 companies, released this week, comes to the unsurprising conclusion that they are not. A third of those responsible for litigation budgets had never heard of ATE, and 16% had heard of it but didn’t know what it was.

The survey also confirms that what clients want, more even than certainty of outcome, is certainty of cost. If solicitors are not prepared to change and offer that to their commercial clients, there is a small but growing number of firms out there – like Addleshaws – that will.