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The court should accordingly be provided with reliable information as to realistic
levels of fees and charges.
(a)
A working group should be set up by the Judiciary to collect and publish data
including information derived from taxations conducted by the taxing masters,
tabulated according to criteria material to assessment (such as seniority of the
lawyers involved, complexity of the application and any special features of the
case).
(b)
It would be very much in the interests of the two branches of the profession to
provide their input to ensure that the data published realistically reflect sums
which should properly be allowable on taxation. It is therefore to be hoped that
the cooperation of the Bar Association and the Law Society would be
forthcoming.
(c)
In any particular case, the court should have to hand the costs statements of
each of the parties to the application. While there may be instances where one
side will justifiably have spent a great deal more than the other in preparing for
and arguing the application, what the paying party has itself spent on costs will
often be a helpful indicator of the reasonableness of the costs claimed by the
receiving party.
(d)
Where appropriate, courts making summary assessments may wish to give short
reasons for their assessment with a view to providing guidance and promoting
subsequent consistency of approach.
Training will be important. All judges likely to be involved in the summary
assessment of costs, should be required to undergo training in the assessment of costs
before the power is introduced. They should thereafter be required periodically to
attend conferences (similar to sentencing conferences) conducted by the Judicial
Studies Board to keep themselves informed of currently acceptable charging rates and
to promote consistency of approach.
Notes
The unfortunate inability of the Bar Council to secure majority acceptance by members of the Bar
Association of a relaxation in the Bar Code to permit voluntary disclosures of charging rates and
levels may however cause difficulty here. This is discussed further later in this Final Report: see
Section 25.
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