The bill has been compulsory for most multi-track cases for nearly a year. However, roundtable attendees said its potential has been held back by a resistance to change.
Senior Costs Judge, Andrew Gordon-Saker, said his experience has been ‘pretty positive’, with problems caused more by lawyers than the bill itself, and he is keen for the bill to be extended to Court of Protection and judicial review proceedings.
‘At the Senior Costs Court Office (SCCO), we get over 8,000 Court of Protection bills per year,’ he said.
‘Now that we have electronic filing, it is crazy that somebody files a bill electronically, and we have to print it off for somebody to assess, and then scan it back on. I also think Court of Protection bills lend themselves to an electronic format. After that, we can look at legal aid bills, and solicitor and own client bills.’ He said electronic billing could also be used for judicial review.
Concerns about the bill included the need to improve the way fee-earners record time in the first place, a lack of training for judges and practitioners in Excel or other XML spreadsheet programs, and a reluctance among some practitioners to move on from paper.
Judge Chris Lethem, who sits on the Civil Procedure Rule Committee, said: ‘I am hearing anecdotal evidence that, whilst regional costs judges will put their foot down, some other judges will show no resistance to an application to have an old style bill.
‘Perhaps they are led by parties that do not want the electronic bill… It is teaching old dogs new tricks.’
Costs lawyer William Mackenzie, of DWF, which hosted the event, said: ‘The issue is that fee-earners do not have any interests in costs.
‘If somebody says, “Let’s dispense with this”, any defendant fee-earner is going to think, “Well, it doesn’t really make a difference to me. I’ll agree to that”. Any claimant that asks for it pretty much gets it.’
However, he said his fee-earners estimated it was 25-30% quicker to review an electronic bill, draft advice and come up with settlement parameters.
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