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I think the other elephant in the room for this outfit is the definition of the bill being subject to assessment.

Their argument, I presume (based on what I can decipher were there submissions on this appeal) is that the "bill" is the deduction from the client's damages and the ATE premium.

Say in an average case these come to £600. To get a "win" and their costs, they need to get £120 knocked off on assessment.

But if the actual bill is the whole amount charged to the client, and it is the *whole costs* that are subject to assessment, then they are going to have to get a lot more knocked off.

Again, say it is a case with stage 1 + 2 costs of £1,330 including VAT and disbursements, and a client deduction of £600, then the total "bill" is actually for £1,930.00 And they are going to have to get £386 knocked off.

Not a big difference, but it could mean that they succeed on assessment of getting the ATE premium refunded, and some trimmed from the success fee, but still lose the case and be liable to pay the solicitor's costs of the detailed assessment.

Certainly the way I do my costs is based on a retainer which provides for hourly rate (and high ones at that), based on time spent and work done on the file. Those hourly rates are high and the bill for an average case will also be high. That high bill is then capped, so the client pays only the amount of recovered costs plus 25%.

If a client applied for an assessment, I would argue they would have to assess the original high bill. They'd have to see if we, for example, failed to give them an estimate of costs at the outset, or if we spent an unreasonable amount of time reviewing the records, or submitting the portal, etc.

That way (I hope) even if they did get some items reduced, the amount payable would still exceed the amount the client was charged.

I'd only be wrong if the client has a freestanding right to assess not the whole bill, but the element they have had deducted from damages, which I can't see.

In all honesty I think a lot of this stems from some idiotic DJ decisions on infant approval where they tried to say it was excessive to deduct sums for a success fee.