Challenges of the Jackson Report to the Cost Draftsmen

The Jackson Report aimed to minimize legal costs in personal injury cases and recommended the abolition of legal fees such as those arising from Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) and After-the-Event (ATE) Insurance.  It also suggested that referral fees be done away with.  These suggestions have been incorporated into a law and this enactment is nearing implementation. Many are saying that these changes may cause the death of the cost draftsman.

However, as I see it, he is still necessary in the post Jackson Report era. The law does not eliminate legal cost altogether.  It just tries to reduce it to a reasonable level.  Since legal costs are still incurred in litigating cases, a cost draftsman still has a job.

When the law is implemented, success fees of solicitors will generally be collected from the client.  In the cost shifting scheme, the losing claimant is not obliged to pay the defendant’s cost.  Each of the parties will answer for his expenses arising from the suit.    Success fees arising from contingency arrangements also require bills of cost since each pound charged by the lawyer will be obtained from the award.  If the litigants question the bill from their lawyers, the services of a skilled cost draftsman will be required.

However, preparing the bill of costs is costly and time-consuming.  The Jackson Report suggested that its preparation must make use of technology.  The time when an activity was done for a case must be entered electronically.  Even a new cost of bills format was suggested in the report.  The cost professionals’ organization responded to the recommendation by developing new software which will minimize the time to prepare the bill of costs.  However, this will entail the cooperation of the solicitors.  The time frame of each activity done in a case must be captured in the software.  The cost professional will then prepare the bill of costs not from the paper files provided by the solicitor but from the database entered into the software.

The reduced time in preparing a bill of costs will also minimize the fees that can be collected by the cost draftsman.  However, it increases his turnaround time to look for new clients.