GIBBINS

There has been significant changes to the Costs Assessment procedure by the LSC as contained in the newly revised Costs Assessment Guidance.  This is section H of Volume 1 of the LSC Manual.  The revised section appears to have only just been uploaded to the LSC website despite being dated October 2007.  

Costs Assessment Guidance - October 2007 

Please look at Paragraphs 15.8, 15.9, 15.10, 15.12, 15.13 & 15.21.  Our reading of this is that: 

• You can claim for drawing bills on Family matters at the appropriate hourly rate.
• You can make a claim in FPC work as well as County & High Court work
• Clients can still be charged by their Costs Draftsmen on a percentage basis
• Preparation of the bill is part of the fixed fee in Care Proceedings unless it is exceptional, in which, we can make a claim
• The time limit for submitting claims is now 6 months and there is no penalty.

Words of Caution:

The Costs Assessment Guidance specifies in paragraph 1.1 that these provisions only to apply to matters commenced after 1^st October 2007.  The Guidance is not ‘law’ and the current Statutory Instruments still provide scale maximums for “preparing the bill”, and exclude work done in the FPC from this provision.  It may well be that amendments to these will follow.  However, if the LSC are issuing this guidance to all practitioners and to those assessing bills, I think we should go along with it.  Therefore, when we make a claim for drawing the bill, we include wording along the lines of “…in accordance with the LSC Costs Assessment Guidance October 2007, paras 15.8, & 15.10” until we get a clearer picture.