The true cost of inefficiency

Solicitor-advocates will always be welcome in Judge Jeremy Cochrane's court - especially if they follow a few simple rules for lodging bills

Solicitors are their own worst enemies.

Time after time delay in payment of publicly funded bills has to be blamed on no one but the lodging solicitors.

Although assessment of bills seeking up to 2,500 is shortly to become the responsibility of the Legal Services Commission, most bills probably exceed that amount, and will still be assessed by district judges.

If publicly funded clients have an interest in the bill, a copy must be sent to them with an explanation that they have a right to be heard.

All too often it happens that the costs draftsman has carefully endorsed the bill with an appropriate passage along the lines of 'the client has/has not been sent a copy of the bill and has/has not advised he/she wishes/does not wish to be heard ...' However, the solicitor has omitted properly to complete the endorsement or sign it.

The bill has to be returned to the solicitor and when it is eventually re-lodged at the court office it joins the back of the queue once more.

Checking the appropriate passage before lodging the bill takes seconds, and avoids weeks or even months of deceleration of payment.

Delay also occurs as a result of solicitors not bothering to look through bills drawn by costs draftsmen before they are lodged.

The draftsman's notes that figures need to be inserted, checked and possibly amended are missed, as are comments about the weaknesses of claims made or liberties taken.

District judges are under heavy pressure from the relentless flow of 'boxwork' with which they must deal when not hearing cases.

This includes bills for provisional detailed assessment.

I hope to encourage judges to assist solicitors' cashflow by dealing with those bills even faster than they already do.

Solicitors will help by eliminating the carelessness I have highlighted.

Costs draftsmen are meticulous, but even they sometimes find it difficult to discern what precisely the solicitor has done.

Attendance notes should be sufficiently comprehensive to enable a person with modest knowledge of the case to be able to interpret what was discussed, decided and advised.

Illegible or incoherent attendance notes can result in costs being lost.

Make notes on the assumption that you might fall ill, leaving others to decipher them.

Would they be able to? Not a cheerful thought, but practical.

And where have all the county court advocates gone? Too few solicitors seem sufficiently confident these days to appear as civil court advocates.

This is particularly so in family cases, and it is a pity.

By inclination and training they are well equipped to appear and can command a suitable uplift for conducting their own advocacy in publicly funded cases.

But effective advocacy may be imperilled by the advocate becoming too close to the client and losing or reducing the ability to be objective.

The modern propensity for everyone to use first names may reduce anxieties and increase warmth.

But a solicitor may engender greater confidence in the client by retaining some element of formality in the relationship.

There needs to be a modest gulf between the adviser and person being advised, for unpalatable advice is easier to give, and very much easier to accept, if the transmission is between two people whose relationship is to some degree detached.

Solicitors are as well able to represent their clients as counsel, particularly on ancillary relief hearings and on those involving children.

Counsel may once have talked down to solicitors, but now do so infrequently - and when it does happen, it is usually the less able barristers trying to perpetuate what was never justified.

District Judge Jeremy Cochrane is the new president of the Association of District Judges.

He sits at Derby Combined Court Centre