Alternative Fee Arrangements - Fixed, Capped And Conditional Fees

The cost of litigation is a problem. Even relatively simple County Court claims can cost over £15,000 if they conclude in a trial. Complex High Court claims can cost hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds.

Litigation costs so much because of the complexity of our legal system and modern commerce. In most cases, complicated commercial relationships generate very large amounts of written material. Lawyers need to understand these relationships and review the written material generated by them in order to advise their clients and prepare their cases for submission to Courts. These activities take significant amounts time to complete.

At the moment, lawyers charge their clients for litigation services on the basis of hourly rates, so the end cost of litigation is the sum of the total hours worked on the case multiplied by the hourly rates of the lawyers involved. Court timetables also take many months, sometimes years, to reach trial. Even ignoring Parkinson's Law