If the Legal Costs Blog has seemed a bit quiet lately that is because I’ve been off sick with some kind of cold/flu virus for the best part of the last four weeks. To suggest I’m now a bit behind with work would be an understatement.

With all the recent costs developments, I’ve now got about six month’s worth of blog posts to write.

Until I’ve caught up can I ask the government to refrain from making any further costs related announcements, the rules committee from making any relevant rule changes and the courts from making any further costs judgments?

I did manage to stagger to the LexisNexis Costs and Litigation Funding conference on Thursday. A quick summary of some of the issues covered can be found on the Legal Futures website. This included costs judge Master Haworth predicting that the Jackson reforms are likely to lead to the costs war restarting with a new wave of satellite litigation. So, something good may come out of all the upheaval.

The chair of the conference, His Honour Michael Cook, quoted from the article I wrote for Solicitors Journal on the unresolved issue of whether VAT is included within the proposed 25% success fee cap in personal injury claims. Despite that article being written back in July we seem to be no closer to an answer.

In other news (I’m trying to cram in as much as possible here), the Association of Costs Lawyers has released Modernising Bills of Costs – First Report of the Jackson Working Group. This report has been based on work by a number of key stakeholders and can be expected to form the basis for the inevitable changes to bill format that will follow Jackson implementation.