Steven Davies heralds the introduction of the electronic bill of costs
For over three years practitioners have been getting to grips with the implementation of the civil justice reforms which introduced amongst other things, costs management, qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) and the removal of recoverable additional liabilities in most areas of litigation. Yet the recommendation that there be a new electronic bill of costs was not initially implemented.
As a result, the Hutton Committee, led by Alexander Hutton QC and featuring various leading legal, costs and e-billing experts, were tasked with preparing a bill of costs which satisfied the criteria originally outlined by Jackson LJ.
The Hutton Committee envisaged that this new format bill would be more transparent, user-friendly and inexpensive to prepare, plus would support the costs being claimed by allowing parties to provide greater levels of information. The figures contained therein would also be manipulated by the court upon provisional and detailed assessment. Further, the bill would be broken down in accordance with the phases of a costs
