Legal Business

Sophisticated spending – Managing the costs of high-stakes litigation

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Foreword

The rate of change affecting litigation costs is alarming when the rumours and policy proposals are conflated with the concrete developments. If Sir Rupert Jackson had his way, the burden of court-mandated budgeting in cases up to £10m, itself relatively new, would soon be alleviated at the lower end by fixed costs. That lower end could be in cases worth up to £250,000 – which to the wider world is not low at all.

Meanwhile, budgeting is said to be clogging up the court lists; hence only skeletal budget submissions are now needed for cases worth up to £50,000. There is an updated court form for compiling and presenting budgets but it remains user-hostile. The design of this ‘Precedent H’ continues to veer towards data obfuscation and is not easy on the eye.