Counting the cost of stalemate

The days when billing a client involved a simple 'for services rendered' are long gone.

Costs are now a cottage industry - and are, as the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, has said, the Achilles' heel of the civil justice system.

Solicitors are still waiting to hear from the House of Lords in the conditional fee test case of Callery v Gray, as well as the key wasted costs case of Medcalf v Mardell.

In the meantime, the Court of Appeal recently warned solicitors not to challenge costs orders simply because the judge has not provided reasons for them.

Lord Phillips said costs litigation needed to be stemmed.

And all the while, many claimant solicitors are battling with oft-reviled costs negotiators.

So we have the idea of fixed costs, but this is not finding much favour with claimant solicitors.

The Civil Justice Council is pondering how fixed costs could work - but the whole debate is a symptom of the malaise as much as the cure.

To some extent, it comes from the 'something must be done' school of thought.

The wrangling is set to go on for some time to come, but for how long can the issue of lawyers' costs - however legitimate it may be - be allowed to have such a detrimental effect on the system?

For reasonable debate to begin, entrenched, immovable views must be cast aside.