The mandatory date for roll out of CCMS across the country is to be put back from October 2015 to February 2016. The CCMS (Client and Cost Management System) is an online system for civil and family legal aid providers and others assigned to work on their cases, e.g. advocates, clerks and costs lawyers. It covers the whole process for certificated civil and family legal aid work, from submitting legal aid applications to paying bills.
A claimant’s decision to switch from funding their case via legal aid to a conditional fee arrangement (CFA) just days before the Jackson reforms were implemented was reasonable, a senior costs judge has ruled.
Civil Procedure Rule Committee member Chris Lethem DJ has expressed his “deep unease about the desert of applications” to vary costs budgets, two years after the introduction of costs management.
In May this year, Lord Justice Jackson gave a speech at Gray’s Inn Hall in London in which he identified a number of problems to have emerged as a result of his reforms. His paper can be found here.
Here at T M Costings, we welcome the recent ruling in Ben Hoare Bell Solicitors & Ors, R (On the Application Of) v The Lord Chancellor [2015] EWHC 523 (Admin) (03 March 2015). This ruling overturned recently-introduced limitation on the availability of legal aid funding for judicial review cases.
In recent months, the official status of the costs lawyer profession has continued to grow. We’ve recently re-launched our degree-level professional qualification, and have been formally recognised within the new guideline hourly rates (GHR) regime for the first time. It’s therefore unfortunate that Queen’s Bench Master David Cook has questioned our role in the costs budgeting process.
The war of words between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the legal profession over court fees escalated during the last week of February. Nine signatories, including the Law Society, Bar Council and Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, have now signed a pre-action protocol letter as a prelude to a possible judicial review of the MoJ’s plan. The letter claims six grounds for challenging the MoJ’s scheme – including that they would be tantamount to ‘selling justice’, contrary to the principles of Magna Carta.
The Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL) has been granted leave to intervene in the case of Coventry v Lawrence. The case will consider whether the recoverability of additional liabilities (ie success fees and ATE insurance premiums) under the Access to Justice Act 1999 infringed Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and/or Article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention.
In a recent libel case, the High Court clarified the judiciary’s approach to contingencies within budgets. In the dispute, contingencies accounted for around 10 per cent of both sides’ future estimated costs.
The Law Society’s Council has agreed to seek judicial review of the legal aid crime duty tender process.