Costs Management White Paper

The Association of Costs Lawyers has published an excellent White Paper on the First Year of Costs Management.

Unfortunately, it repeats the myth that costs budgeting means Costs Lawyers are the “quantity surveyors of the litigation world”.

When a quantity survey puts a price on constructing a building, he knows the precise shape and size of the planned building. Give of take a margin of error of a few millimetres, at most, the end building should follow the exact measurements given in the architect’s plans. Working out the number of bricks required, sacks of cement, etc, is a scientific process. Quantity surveyors do not face the problem of not being sure whether the end building will be a bungalow, a skyscraper or a half finished flat.

There are going to be some very upset Costs Lawyer clients if they buy into this quantity surveyor myth.


4 thoughts on “Costs Management White Paper

  1. not half as many upset, as any client that buys into the ACL myth that “only regulated Cost Lawyers are capable and suitable to prepare bills and budgets”. I’ve been seeing, opposing and tearing to pieces budgets on CMC’s, where CL’s just do not understand, its not about the figures you put down (any CLown can do that), but how the whole budget fits together and balances out the work in different phases and why. I even had one CLown say my Defendant client should not be allowed any time on Witnesses as we had stated in the AQ we were not calling any – even the Judge asked if we were not supposed to consider the statement of the 4 his client intended calling!

  2. The ACL can only represent their members through disinformation. Even the CLSB behave in the same way and actually wrote to the Legal Aid Agency to raise the issue of bills / HCCPs being drawn by unregulated individuals, being totally oblivious to the fact that they have as much authority to do this as a CORGI engineer.

  3. well said anonnn!

    and the precise reason why CLown’s are the wrong people to do them

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