The Civil Justice Reforms and the new costs budgeting regime introduced in 2013 represent one of the most significant developments in civil litigation in over a decade or more. Handled correctly, the new regime can help to reduce the cost of litigation significantly and enable defendants to exert greater discipline upon claimant spend.
We have been delivering specialist cost drafting services since 1997 to our key customers in the risk and insurance sectors. We are a major player within the market and provide costs service to the UK’s leading and specialist insurers nationally, from our offices in Birmingham, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Southampton, dealing with costs issues arising in motor, casualty, catastrophic injury, clinical negligence, occupational disease, professional negligence, property damage, public sector and construction disputes.
Our approach to costs has been informed by the range of dispute resolution services we provide to insurers across all types of claims and claim values. Our knowledge of the complete process and contact with our customers throughout allows us to provide a comprehensive and expert costs service, which supports strong technical arguments, substantial savings and a significantly reduced total indemnity spend. Our services include:
- Pre-litigation costs negotiation
- Preparation of estimates, budgets and bills of costs for recovery as well as review/negotiation of claimant’s estimates, budgets and bills of costs.
- Dealing with cost capping applications, interlocutory costs issues, costs budgeting CMCs, provisional/detailed assessments and attending/advising on joint settlement meetings
- Technical support and detailed MI analysis and benchmarking to inform strategy
- Strategic updates, policy guidance and extensive training to customers
- Regular bulletins and updates
Working in-house with lawyers on cases from cradle to grave gives our team an additional insight into how claims are handled and this informs how we deal with costs. We have a strong sense of what is economic and when it makes sense to push cases to assessment. We also have an in-depth appreciation of local attitudes to costs and we tailor our approach to the relevant court. At the same time, you benefit from working with a national firm with a clear overview of nationwide trends and costs reforms.
