Sun 29 Nov
An Integrated Approach to Costs Management
Posted via email from costs2
The scoreline has very retro look about it – like something out of the late 60′s. Fitting that a legend of that era, Ronnie Boyce, was a guest today.
The performance though was very 2009, albeit an exaggerated version of what we have been seeing this season. 5-0 up just after the hour and yet by the final whistle it was West Ham hanging on while Burnley kept pouring forward on either flank. Is no lead safe for this team?
Perhaps someone who knows more about the game than me can tell me if Chris Eagles was really playing like a young Ryan Giggs today (which is what it looked like) or whether it was our poor defending that made him look good.
Anyway – the positives;
I find Twitter really valuable to keep on eye on discussions about topics that interest me.
Where posterous has provided such an easy fix is on those occasions when I want to write something that I don’t want to be constrained by the Twitter character limit.
But realising this can be confusing for people fairly new to social networking I can provide a few very simple tips;
Posted via web from costs2
It was something of a relief this when my colleague Justin Edwards (http://www.ellisgrant.co.uk/justin-edwards-profile.html) told me about the forthcoming revisions to the CPD.
We have been advising clients about disclosure since the CFA Regulations were killed off in November 2005, and we have been getting it right as it turns out.
Justin says
So save where the fees are fixed under Part 45, the receiving party will have to supply either a statement of reasons for the success fee or the CFA risk assessment. Also, if the CFA is not disclosed, the receiving party will have to provide relevant information, such as the definition of a win and the receiving party’s liability if he loses or does not beat a Part 36 offer.
All this is pure common sense but welcome all the same.
Also it looks like new forms of routine communications will now be formally recognised by the costs courts – SMS for example.
So does all this mean that bills in the future are going to list separately emails, text messages, tweets, #yams, fb and #in DMs and waves?
(Ans: of course not)
But even so, something tells me that the 6-minute unit item is on its last legs.
Posted via web from costs2
I should have been working but a stuttering iraqgoals feed distracted me when my curiosity got the better of me just before half-time, and it then had me hooked for the second half of this latest disappointment.
A rank performance against a very poor side (another one that was there for the taking)
One again we were reduced to playing against 10 men.
At least our goal difference is “only” -4.
*mopes*
http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/docs/costs-defamation-response-ii.pdf
It’s well worth reading through the MOJ response to the long-running debate and subsequent consultation over the levels of costs in defamation and other publication proceedings.
The first thing to note is that it needed a rule change in order to introduce a cooling off period before ATE premiums would be recoverable – the reason being the significant obstacle to arguing the point on reasonableness presented by Callery v Gray.
The new 42 day window buys valuable time for publishers to investigate the complaint and make an admission and offer in appropriate cases – without being whacked with a pre-emptive ATE premium.
The increased case management of costs is something we’ve been adjusting to during 2009. Although the new rules did not come into force until October we didn’t need a Michael Fish to tell us which way the wind was blowing (apologies to Bob Dylan there). It’s no coincidence that our larger publication costs cases this year have involved the compilation and presentation of detailed costs estimates. (Tesco v Guardian and Rath v Guardian)
The pilot Precedent HA format looks like an improvement on plain old Precedent H – well it’s a start anyway.
What is important (and this may get a wider airing beyond publication proceedings) is the requirement to anchor estimates to tasks like disclosure, preparation of witness statements, and obtaining expert reports – and to specify contingencies such as a meaning application.
If this is how costs are to be budgeted, then adherence to those budgets will need to be measured by task. From there it is a relatively short hop to assessing costs by reference to tasks (in the few cases in future that should require detailed assessment).
Posted via web from costs2
Costing between £600 and £800 per head depending upon how near to the event you book (the cheap airline price model translated to expensive conferences) Jan 2010′s Solicitors’ Costs Conference turns out to be the Silver Jubilee of this annual get-together of the Costserati.
We will have a four people there so it’s an expensive day out for the firm. I would really prefer it was half the time and a quarter of the cost.
I can see a bigger turnout this year if only because of the proximity to the publication of the Jackson Review. The question I always have in my head when listening to the great and the good is “Will we have jobs next year?” and given that I imagine the answer to that question is going to be “not all of you”, the marketing is out of kilter with the mood.
I don’t value faux-posh nosh, and if it meant saving a grand on our bill I would happily make a couple of visits to Pret and buy my own Polo Mints.
If social media in the litigation costs niche ever takes off I can see IBC catching a big cold on future costs conferences as budget venues for network events become easier to organise.
No disrespect to the speakers here – it’s a good line-up.
Posted via web from costs2
Fantastic day again at St George’s. Every year we hit this world-class golf course at the beginning of November as soon as the cost drops for visitors.
Thanks to the almost total absence of wind, it was as playable as I’ve known it. Epic (and it added an extra dimension to be playing off the medal tees). Intrinsically tough it remains – so how good was David Hawkins’ round today? Our club pro recorded a 2-under par round including four birdiesThere’s not much I can say about the most recent performance save that it was loads better than the scoreline suggests.
It wasn’t that many years ago that Ellis Grant’s office was awash with Philips micro cassettes. But one afternoon I bumped into Jack Levin on Chancery Lane’s eastbound platform (as you do) and he evangelised on the twin subjects of following West Ham away and his latest toy – a portable digital dictation recorder. Well that was it. Olympus had a new customer about a week later and we took a leap forward in speeding up workflow
That was until at the beginning of 2009 we shifted emphasis to a thin client network but found that for digital dictation we needed to revert to local sessions for downloading and sending voice files around the network – and that was and remains cumbersome.
MS Terminal Services is all very well most of the time for our hot-desking and mobile way of working (get us!) – but most software suppliers want a fortune for making their applications work that way.
Step in nFlow and in particular nFlow live (http://www.nflowlive.com/). Dictation as a Service or DaaS for short. Web-based and with a reputation for being easily managed – it looks far better than the equivalent offering from BigHand – and we get to use our “legacy” kit, and it is due to work via iPhones and BlackBerrys from about next month.
Our free 30 day trial starts tomorrow – fingers crossed because we rate the features, especially the one that means you don’t lose your work if your broadband gets interrupted (like mine just did).
We’ll keep you posted
Posted via web from costs2
No not Windows 7 – not interested (yet).
It’s Excel 2007 that looks like it has saved our bacon. Can’t go into detail yet but suffice to say we need to produce a very big bill of costs that works and we need to do it in a raging hurry for a client that rightly expects us to perform.
In Excel 2003 we would not have had even a puncher’s chance. We are way over the max number of rows 2003 can handle but the real game-changer for us is the ability to filter unlimited combinations of category (not the one-at-time purgatory that 2003 inflicts).
All that plus the tables/vlookup, easier pivot tables and it’s becoming true love. This is powerful software that is paying for itself every day. We’re so sad now that we want to learn about array formulae.
We are also enjoying the smaller XML footprint and faster response. When I’m at home I tend to work on my iMac via RDC/VPN to our MS Terminal server and there is no discernible lag despite my home ADSL being .. (what’s the technical term for “a bit shit”?)
Clearly we need to get out more.
Oh and I far prefer the Windows MS Excel 2007 to the Office Mac 2008 version.
Posted via web from costs2
As a West Ham fan you keep telling yourself that it can’t go on like this – not having the confidence to turn draws into wins. Fading.
Tonight we had a wee bit of luck but showed a lot of guts and the story had a happy and just ending.
All the things I had been worried about took a turn for the better tonight. Robert Green made a save in the first half that is as good as you will see all season (and some). Matt Upson gave nothing away to Carew, Parker bossed the midfield with a rejuvenated Mark Noble taking responsibility alongside him.
For once it was our opponents that faded after the first half and we responded with resolve and togertherness after the early losses of Ilunga and Cole. We were lucky to be in front at half time but the second half was rightly ours. Just before half time Zavon Hines was put through when offside and was brought down by Habib Beye (who may have got a slight touch on the ball) – that was the one bit of luck we had.
Villa’s only threat came from the serial cheat Ashley Young. He missed a penalty but then fluked a cross in to equalise soon after half time.
From then on it was all us to be honest. The finale, deep into injury time, saw Hines nick the winner. He took his chance with cool aplomb. Thank God for that
I’m glad work is busy at the moment for two reasons;
Which is just as well.
The body language of our spine (Green Upson and Parker) is one of dejection and frustration (Carlton excepted – although eye witnesses captured a slight regression in the second half at Sunderland).
The normally vibrant fan site ITBS has resorted to polemics about X Factor rather than talk about life in E13.
If we don’t win tonight I can see it getting ugly – even though under normal circumstances a draw in this fixture would be a decent result.
The biggest barrier to a better way to draft solicitors' bills is the block time entry. There needs to be a significant headshift for recorders to think task first and activity second.
Posted via email from costs2
There is a sporadic debate within the law costs community in England and Wales about the format of bills of costs and related documents like estimates.
Lord Justice Jackson has taken the view that the 19th century format is ripe for an update but ideas are thin on the ground. I think that is about to change and as it does I will bring those ideas to this blog