Andy Ellis takes the pain out of electronic billing
- From 6 April 2018, bills for Part 7 claims must be submitted in electronic spreadsheet form.
- Law firms that adapt can reap the benefits.
Bills for detailed assessment in Part 7 claims must be submitted in electronic spreadsheet form for work carried out after 6 April 2018—and if that amendment to the CPR doesn’t get readers’ pulses racing, nothing will.
For the wider costs community, as Mr Justice Birss has explained, surrendering to Excel equates to ‘being dragged kicking and screaming into the 1980s’. The more pertinent question then is not, ‘Why is this needed?’ but ‘Why has it taken so long?’
The reassuring news for practitioners whose heads are already hitting the desk at this point is that they probably need to know little about the mechanics of the new electronic bill. Those who are sanguine about the merits of pivot tables and the benefits of xml schema can safely
