header-logo header-logo

A heavy cost?

16 June 2013 / David Burrows
Categories: Features , Family , Costs , Jackson , LASPO 2012
printer mail-detail

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

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

FOIL—Bridget Tatham

FOIL—Bridget Tatham

Forum of Insurance Lawyers elects president for 2026

Gibson Dunn—Robbie Sinclair

Gibson Dunn—Robbie Sinclair

Partner joinslabour and employment practice in London

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Real estate dispute resolution team welcomes newly qualified solicitor

NEWS
Cryptocurrency is reshaping financial remedy cases, warns Robert Webster of Maguire Family Law in NLJ this week. Digital assets—concealable, volatile and hard to trace—are fuelling suspicions of hidden wealth, yet Form E still lacks a section for crypto-disclosure
NLJ columnist Stephen Gold surveys a flurry of procedural reforms in his latest 'Civil way' column
Paper cyber-incident plans are useless once ransomware strikes, argues Jack Morris of Epiq in NLJ this week
In this week's NLJ, Robert Hargreaves and Lily Johnston of York St John University examine the Employment Rights Bill 2024–25, which abolishes the two-year qualifying period for unfair-dismissal claims
Writing in NLJ this week, Manvir Kaur Grewal of Corker Binning analyses the collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh, where a terrorism charge failed because prosecutors lacked statutory consent. The case, she argues, highlights how procedural safeguards—time limits, consent requirements and institutional checks—define lawful state power
back-to-top-scroll