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Anon @ 16:41. but why are the profit costs £1,000? Who says. Guidelines hourly rates for summary assessment? They aren't compulsory. Legal aid rates? What billy down the road charges? If the profit costs were in fact £5,000, and success fee of £1,000, but the amount deducted from damages were limited to £500, it matters not even if the success fee is assessed down to nought - the base costs are still enough to justify the 25% deduction.

Anon@16:44 on what basis? I quoted the rule - costs are deemed to be reasonable if incurred with the express or implied approval of the client.

Anon@16:53 if you set a success fee at zero, why does that mean the client keeps "all his/her damages"? It just means you add no uplift to base costs. Or do base costs in your cases all and always miraculously happen to be equal to the Part 45 Stage 1,2 and 3 / predictable costs applicable? If what you say is correct, that would surely mean in some cases your base costs will be lower than the relevant fixed fee, in which case you send a cheque back to the LV insurance company in respect of fixed costs saying "thanks, but we don't need it", or be higher than the fixed fee in which case you either charge the client or write it off. And also means you bear the costs of unsuccessful cases as an overhead of the business not compensated for by success fees. Why would you do that?

Legal aid was taken away because we had success fees to compensate (i.e. the inter partes recoverable success fees)

Inter partes success fees were taken away because we had 25% of damages to compensate.

But I guess as conveyancing shows, there will always be people willing to spiral to the bottom and out-compete each other.

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