Murray Heining provides an overview of the new qualification for costs lawyers
The changing face of civil litigation is having a corresponding effect on the role of costs lawyers.
Our position, which has already been enhanced in recent years by becoming a properly regulated profession standing side-by-side with solicitors, barristers and others, has arguably become more important with the new focus on prospective budgeting by parties to litigation, rather than after-the-event assessments.
Getting it right
This means solicitors will need to get it right from the start of their case, as judges have warned that it will usually be extremely difficult to persuade them to revise a budget that contains mistakes.
Speaking at the Association of Costs Lawyers’ (ACL) annual conference last year, Mr Justice Ramsey—the judge in charge of Jackson implementation—said he saw us playing a key role in future. He said: “The expertise of people in this room is to say, ‘We’ve seen what happens at the end of litigation and now we’re going to apply that to the beginning of litigation’. That is an essential but difficult task.” And
