Costs budgeting, guideline hourly rates and the extension of fixed costs were among the topics covered in a recent batch of recommendations handed down by the Civil Justice Council (CJC). In this week’s NLJ, Julian Chamberlayne and Louise Morgan welcome the ‘various bespoke processes’ championed in the CJC’s final report, and set out their thinking on the reforms ahead.
In this highly informative article, they highlight some of the major changes, comb through the details, set them in context and look at the pros and cons.
Among their conclusions on the different aspects of the recommendations, the authors write: ‘The flexibility to decouple case and cost management hearings is welcome. However, the intended time and cost savings could be lost if the requirement for cost information before the first case management conference is anything other than light-touch. Selecting from a list of brackets of likely costs could be a simple solution.’
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