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16 June 2013 / David Burrows
Categories: Features , Family , Costs , Jackson , LASPO 2012
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A heavy cost?

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David Burrows reviews how LASPO has changed the funding landscape of family litigation

Costs D-Day – 1 April 2013 – brought limited changes for the family lawyer as a direct result of the Jackson reforms to the CPR 1998 costs rules introduced by the Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2013 (CP(A)R 2013). However, for the family lawyer with a legal aid practice, the funding landscape changes completely under Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO).

Costs can mean two different things:
• what a client pays to a lawyer to run his or her case (funding); or
• the sum of money which is ordered to be paid by one party to another (costs) for their expense on the proceedings (mostly for lawyers).

This article considers costs in both senses in the context of family proceedings. It will be recalled that the costs rules for civil proceedings are applied in a variety of different ways (according to type of proceedings) to family proceedings.

For the funding of family proceedings, two regimes were

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