One of the major issues relating to litigation is the uncertainty with regard to costs. A party will very often not know how much the pursuit or defence of a claim is going to cost in financial terms. While estimates will (or at least should be) given, they can and are often (and with justification) exceeded. This is because of the time-honoured fashion of charging clients on a time spent basis. It is extremely difficult to predict accurately the amount of time that is going to be spent on a claim that may take up to one year to be resolved and which may or may not involve a whole host of different procedural steps. It is (in part) for that reason that clients are attracted by alternative bases of charging/sources of funding. As will be discerned from our website (http://www.healys.eu/) the Commercial Litigation department at Healys offers the full range of such alternative bases of charging/sources of funding, such as contingency fee arrangements, conditional fee agreements, third party funding and after-the-event insurance.
We also offer (where appropriate/suitable) fixed costs. For obvious reasons, this can be an extremely attractive to clients because it provides certainty and with all the attendant advantages with regard to budgeting and cash flow. However, this is not the “panacea for all evils” as illustrated by the following:
“In 2004, a German lawyer, Dr Juergen Graefe, acted for an elderly pensioner who was sent a tax demand for €287 million, even though the woman’s income was only €17,000. Dr Graefe fixed the problem with one standard letter to the authorities, but as German law entitled him to calculate his fees based on the amount of the reduction he obtained, his fee came to €440,234 (£308,000),” Gary Slapper in Times Online.
We always seek to tailor the basis of charging/sources of funding to the particular needs of the client and the nature of the dispute. If you wish to discuss any of the issues raised in this article or any other aspects of a dispute in which you are or consider you might become involved, please contact us.
