All articles by Rachel Rothwell – Page 19
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News
Will litigators be lured by contingency fees?
With the starting gun for contingency fees in commercial litigation due to fire in April 2013, interest in how the new damages-based agreements (DBAs) will work has been building in recent months. Now, with the publication of a set of recommendations from the Civil Justice Council’s DBAs working group, a ...
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Should funders bring collective actions?
As the government closed its consultation on collective actions in competition law cases at the end of last month, there was an outcry from business groups warning against the plans. Among the critics were the CBI, and our old friends the Institute of Legal Reform ...
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Lessons from the low-value RTA process
Last week the Ministry of Justice finally revealed Professor Fenn’s independent report on the operation of the low-value road traffic accident process. And it was rather disappointing. Fenn found that costs under the process, which uses an electronic portal, appeared to be 3-4% lower than previously, ...
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Are GCs prevented from forcing down fees?
I heard a depressing tale last week that will be familiar to many lawyers working in the in-house sector. A general counsel was dealing with a substantial piece of litigation. He had chosen to give the job to a good silver circle firm, and was very ...
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Personal injury costs reform continues apace
Behind-the-scenes work on the implementation of Lord Justice Jackson’s reform of personal injury costs has stepped up a gear or three in the past few weeks. The government intends to make a ministerial statement on qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) on 19 July, which has injected some urgency into the ...
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Will funders start bypassing solicitors?
There is quite a buzz about third-party funding at the moment. Media coverage has spread well beyond the legal press, with recent articles on the topic in the FT and now even the Guardian. But much as funders like to suggest every now and ...
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Lawyers wary of cost-shifting plan
Claimants who win their cases could still end up with nothing under the government’s new costs rules for personal injury, lawyers warned this week. Claimant solicitors said the way government plans to implement its qualified one-way costs-shifting (QOCS) rules will ‘undoubtedly’ deter people from making valid ...
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MoJ answers key QOCS questions
The government has answered some of the fundamental questions about how its new system for transferring the costs burden in personal injury cases will work. Under qualified one-way costs shifting, claimants are intended to be protected from defendants’ costs in most circumstances, even when they lose. ...
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Is it wrong to profit from divorce litigation?
There are some intriguing developments in the financing of divorce cases at the moment. Investment in divorce litigation hit the headlines earlier in the year with the high-profile divorce of Michelle Young from her millionaire former husband Scot, described in the press as a 'fixer’ for ...
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Fees on way back down to earth
Speaking at the Association of Costs Lawyers’ annual conference last week, the master of the rolls Lord Neuberger expressed great confidence that a combination of the Jackson reforms, alternative business structures and client demand for fixed fees will mean that lawyer’s fees are almost certain to come down.
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News
Regulation of will-writers will affect solicitors too
The solicitors’ profession was punching the air in celebration last week when the Legal Services Board announced its intention to finally bring will-writing into the regulatory fold.
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The third degree
In the House of Lords recently, a Liberal Democrat peer pointed out that third-party funding used to be ‘both a crime and a civil tort’. But unusually for a practice that was previously considered illegal, third-party funding is now basking in the warm glow of judicial approval; and while the ...
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Are judges interested in legal costs?
In a year’s time, everything is set to change in relation to lawyers’ costs. Among Lord Justice Jackson’s many and ambitious plans are a new rule on how to decide whether legal fees are proportionate (met with scepticism by many experts, it must be said), ...
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DBAs move a step closer
With damages-based agreements (or contingency fees as they used to be known) coming into being next April, the Civil Justice Council has now set the wheels in motion to begin drawing up the all-important rules that will govern how the new fees are actually going to operate.
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Lord Young shuns meeting with profession’s regulator
Lord Young of Graffham turned down an offer to meet with the solicitors' regulator in advance of his report on health and safety and the ‘compensation culture’, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said. The SRA said it had ‘offered to engage’ with Young during the research ...
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Government regulation of third-party funding shelved - for now
The question of whether third-party investment in litigation should be regulated by government raised its ugly head one final time in the House of Lords last week.
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Solicitors need to wise up to contingency fees
One of the big uncertainties of the Jackson reforms is how big damages-based agreements (‘DBAs’, or contingency fees as they are more commonly known) are going to be. For the first time outside of employment cases, from April 2013 lawyers will be able to take ...
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Look out for a clampdown on costs
It’s fair to say that most litigators prefer to spend their time on the cut and thrust of litigation rather than compiling detailed calculations of what they expect their final bill to be.
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Storm raging over investing in litigation
Third-party litigation funding (through which investors fund someone else’s case in exchange for a percentage of damages if they win) does not normally receive much mainstream attention in the UK, given that it is a relatively small sector here.
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A blow for case management?
The Gazette reported last week on a case in which former firm Bevan Ashford faces legal action over advice given free of charge by a newly qualified solicitor. Given the number of firms out there offering a free half-hour of advice to new clients, it’s no wonder that so many ...