A firm’s legal aid payment has been halved after a judge found that blank pages within documentation resulted in ‘significant overpayment for work obviously not undertaken’.

Lam & Meerabux Solicitors represented Mr Spence, as he is referred to in the judgment, at Woolwich Crown Court on charges of money laundering arising out of a drugs investigation. The firm claimed a graduated fee of £87,905.14 in legal aid on the basis of 9,756 pages of prosecution evidence.

The formal page count was taken from the Crown Court Digital Case System, which costs judge Master Whalan initially said should be used. 

The lord chancellor appealed the decision, arguing that the costs judge had erred in law and as a result the firm ‘will be paid a substantial sum for reviewing thousands of blank pages’.

The uploaded document’s blank pages were a result of its format: a PDF of the print preview of a spreadsheet.

Following a determining officer’s analysis, the total was assessed at 3,798 pages resulting in a £37,200.07 fee. This was appealed by Lam & Meerabux.

The lord chancellor conceded that duplicated pages could be included making the total 5,014 pages and a fee of £47,550.10 but argued that the fee ‘has been increased by a sum of £40,355.04 by the inclusion of blank pages’.

Mr Justice Cotter said there ‘was and is no obligation to slavishly use a page count on DCS if it is clear that it arises from…an artificial document produced by conversion…solely to produce a number of pages’.

He added: ‘By virtue of the conversion process, [the document] would result in a number which does not reflect the work which was undertaken and significant overpayment.’

The Lord Chancellor v Lam & Meerbux Solicitors judgment found costs judge Whalan ‘fell into error’ when he found the determining officer’s role ‘did not extend to an ability to assess whether a blank page could be considered as [a page of prosecution evidence]’.

It said: ‘There is simply no basis for such limitations of the broad discretion specifically given by the regulations; particularly as it would axiomatically result in very significant overpayment.’ The fact that the system cannot accurately assess blank pages 'cannot provide a justification for the conclusion that there is no discretion to deviate from an obviously artificial and inflated figure'.

He added: ‘Blank pages contain no evidence and I struggle with the proposition that the assessment of whether a page is technically blank (whatever that means) is not blindingly obvious. It takes a glance and no more.’

Setting the costs judge’s order aside and acknowledging the correct amount of pages as 5,014 and the graduated fee of £47,550.10, Cotter said: ‘The costs judge fell into error and the determining officer was well within his rights to exclude blank pages.'

The judge acknowledged that removing blank pages ‘may often be a disproportionate task for a public body’ but added: ‘I cannot accept that it is right that the burden solely lies upon the CPS to avoid a solicitor being paid for the (detailed) consideration of blank pages. However I do question the approach of solely uploading a print preview of a spreadsheet.’

He said the CPS should examine the practice of uploading print previews which create an ‘unusable document and an unreliable guide to the extent of the data within the spreadsheet’.

‘It appears to me that it is highly likely to result in a significantly inflated page count. Given that the concern is the appropriate use of public finances the CPS should evaluate the issue and consider some national guidance.’

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