Francis Kendall shares some shocking statistics from the 2018 ACL conference survey
A poll of 146 costs lawyers at the Association of Costs Lawyers’ (ACL’s) annual conference last November showed that only 10% said solicitors have got better at sticking to their budgets. This shocking statistic is perhaps mitigated slightly by the fact that only 23% of those responding said solicitors always went over what was budgeted. However, a further 53% said they sometimes went over.
Although these figures are all improvements on the same survey in 2017 – where the figures were 5%, 29% and 65% respectively – it must be of concern.
Absent success on the “good reason to depart” test on detailed assessment, any costs over budget in a phase reflects work that solicitors are undertaking that will simply never be recovered from the opponent on assessment. They must either know, suspect or are simply ignorant to that position at the time that the work is undertaken.
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