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The entire concept of costs budgeting is, like many other changes to civil procedure over the past few years, just an absurd bit of window-dressing - the result of allowing politicians to become involved in civil procedure.

For a start everyone routinely exaggerates the complexity of the case and the costs that are likely to be incurred, so as to allow some of it to be knocked off with actually harming the bottom line.

Secondly, many of the judges dealing with budgeting haven't got a clue about costs. As ex-barristers they never became involved with such vulgarities, leaving their humble clerks to deal with the grubby matter of money.

And thirdly the whole time-consuming and expensive charade of trying to predict the costs involved in complex litigation is a toxic combination of guesswork, speculation and out and out fraud dressed up as a pseudo-science.

In fact most such discussions bear a striking resemblance to one of the BBC meetings portrayed in the excellent W1A - lots of highly paid people talking utter nonsense!

The idiots who came up with this idea are completely out of touch with reality. In practical terms by far and away the most effective budget controller is one's own client.

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