Solicitor and Client Costs Conference (6 Hrs CPD for Costs Lawyers)

This conference will be streamed live direct to your desktop so you can watch it from your office or home. The price for this is £290. This is a per organisation price, so as many of your colleagues as you want can participate at no extra charge, even if they are viewing it from a different place

This is streets ahead of an ordinary passive webinar experience with one or two speakers,  which would get very tedious after an hour or two. We have 9 speakers. With this online conference, you will be able to participate with as many colleagues as you want - either live, or in segments (perhaps viewing it a session at a time over several days/weeks) or on an on-demand, recorded basis. You will be able to take part by video, audio or text, to answer or ask questions, participate in polls, workshops and discussions and network with other delegates during breaks, from your office or home. 

This is a highly practical conference which will be raising money for our charity partner, LawWorks, the pro bono charity. It will set out the main issues and problems that arise when clients challenge their solicitor’s bill and cover the rules, statutes and case law and also provide guidance as to terms of retainers as well as the process of assessing charges.

This area of law is complex and is still not well known by many practitioners. Furthermore, clients are now far more likely to have to pay their own costs and challenges to solicitor’s fees are increasingly common. 

The conference will appeal to:

- costs lawyers and draftsmen who have to advise on the implications for their clients

- Private practice solicitors who need to keep up to date with the law and practice

- All those who are involved with the legal and practical implications

We are delighted to have gathered together some of the top experts in these complex areas, including Master Jason Rowley and Dominic Regan, plus many others, and between them they will cover such topics as:

• Solicitor and Client Costs 2020: Opportunities, Problems and Pitfalls
• Late and inadequate budgets
• Retainer Issues
• Conduct and costs
• Statute Bills and Interim Statute Bills
• DBAs – Current flop and future hope?
• Estimates: The Golden Rules
• Assessment Applications and Procedure
• Non-party costs orders
• Third party funding – risks and pitfalls

Speakers include:

Master Jason Rowley

Professor Dominic Regan

PJ Kirby QC, Hardwicke

Robert Marven QC, 4 New Square

Reuben Glynn, PIC

Dan Stacey, Hailsham Chambers

Robin Dunne, Hardwicke

Joshua Munro, Hailsham Chambers

Judith Ayling, 39 Essex Chambers

Who is The Legal Training Consultancy?

Between us we have been responsible for putting together a vast number of law related conferences, webinars, seminars, videos and e-learning modules. Altogether more than 2000. Our first conference was a Food Law and Nutrition conference in 1987 as one of our colleagues had worked as a legal adviser in the food industry for 9 years. This experience has led us to develop a series of very different conferences where the day itself is just part of the package, rather than being the beginning, middle and end, all in one day. From delegates being able in advance to influence the content of the event through a UGC (user generated content) session, through to a package of major benefits after the event, all of which are included in the price.

The Legal Training Consultancy is a full service training consultancy for the legal profession with a large portfolio of in-house courses and trainers. You can find out more here: www.legaltrainingconsultancy.co.uk

Raising Money for LawWorks

LawWorks is a charity working in England and Wales to connect volunteer lawyers with people in need of legal advice, who are not eligible for legal aid and cannot afford to pay and with the not-for-profit organisations that support them. There are currently over 280 independent legal clinics in the LawWorks network across England and Wales and last year over 48,000 people were given advice or support and over 10,000 individuals volunteered across the network. The people who are helped are often the most vulnerable in our society and have nowhere else to turn. LawWorks also brokers free legal advice for small not-for-profits organisations which cannot afford to pay for a lawyer. (https://www.lawworks.org.uk/)

This is not just an ordinary conference, it’s a whole training package. What else is included and why?

Almost all legal conferences focus purely on delivering content, and over a day, the quantity of content is of course very substantial, even overwhelming, and despite being furnished with notes and slides, delegates do forget an awful lot of what they learn.

Research shows that post-conference reinforcement can very dramatically enhance the amount of information both retained and understood. This can take a multitude of forms, such as videos, questions, updates and other short burst training

So with this in mind, the following is included  at no extra charge:

• Attendance at the conference (with the option of viewing the conference streamed live to you remotely)
• Full documentation and copies of speakers’ slides
• The new second edition of Robin Dunne’s book “A Practical Guide to Solicitor and client Costs”
• Micro-videos from speakers, summarising their session in 5 minutes each (provided after the event)
• Quarterly updates on latest legal, practice and training developments
• Audio recording of conference sessions, released consecutively after the conference

In addition to this, you can also have some say in the content of the conference. The final session of the day is devoted to “user generated content”. Delegates will be invited to submit their thoughts as to what additional question or specific topic they would like covered in this session and, guided by the number of delegates who raise particular points, the speakers will decide which issues to cover. Delegates will be informed in advance about which topics have been selected

What will delegates take away from this conference?

- A crystal-clear and detailed explanation about Solicitor and Client Costs

- A concise and accurate understanding of the common misconceptions

- An ongoing collection of costs resources

- Reduced price access to The Legal Training Consultancy’s portfolio of training courses

Speakers include

Dominic Regan provides advice to a number of Government departments including the Ministry of Defence and HM Revenue and Customs. He is also a special advisor to the Association of Costs Lawyers. In addition to this, he works closely with local authorities, law firms and international companies to advise on and provide legal training. Dominic has advised Lord Justice Jackson on costs budgeting and management. He has also worked alongside HH Judge Simon Brown QC who pioneered active case/costs management. Dominic is Professor of Law at City University, London and a contributor to the New Law Journal and the Times.

Master Jason Rowley has been a Costs Judge at the Senior Courts Costs Office based at the Royal Courts of Justice, since 2 April 2013. He is the leadership judge for the implementation of electronic filing at the SCCO and is the chairman of the SCCO’s Costs Practitioners’ Group. Before joining the bench full time, Jason was a solicitor in private practice for 18 years, before becoming chief executive of a barristers’ chambers in the Temple and then a senior underwriting manager at a legal expenses insurer.

PJ Kirby QC has enjoyed a long and successful career at the Bar having previously been a partner in a Holborn firm of solicitors. He is Joint Head of Chambers at Hardwicke. PJ’s practice covers costs litigation, commercial dispute resolution and professional negligence. He is instructed by a wide range of solicitors from City firms to High Street practitioners. As well as cases in England & Wales PJ has appeared in the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal in relation to the legality of CFAs and in the DIFC in Dubai and much of his work has an international dimension. PJ is recognised as an expert in the field of costs and is often instructed on appeals in relation to problems over retainers, CFAs etc. He is also often instructed to draft bespoke DBAs, CFAs or CCFAs for firms of solicitors and he sits as a Deputy District Judge and is a Bar Council appointed High Court costs assessor. PJ is also an ADR group accredited mediator and is on the Costs ADR (CADR) panel of mediators.

Robert Marven QC is a specialist in all aspects of the law of costs and litigation funding. Robert is instructed in a range of high profile cases and he is often brought into major group and commercial litigation to deal with specific costs issues. He provides strategic advice on matters of commercial importance to all involved with the costs and funding of litigation. He advises on complex funding solutions for major commercial disputes, costs disputes between solicitors and former clients, and substantial disputes concerning legal expenses insurance.

Robin Dunne is a member of Hardwicke Chambers, specialising in costs and litigation funding with a particular emphasis on solicitor and client issues. He was called to the bar in 2002 and was an employed barrister and partner in a City of London firm of solicitors before independent practice. He is recognised as a leading junior for costs in both Chambers and Partners and the Legal 500. Robin published his book “A Practical Guide to Solicitor and Client Costs” in 2018 (with a second edition due in Spring 2020). He has been involved in many of the leading solicitor and client cases of recent years and appears in the SCCO, High Court and Court of Appeal on disputes arising from these issues.

Joshua Munro is a leading junior in costs, professional negligence, construction, commercial litigation and insurance. For professional negligence, Chambers UK 2018 edition says he   is “a brilliant advocate. He is exceptional at trial’ as well as being ” personable and good at dealing with difficult clients”. For Costs, the Legal 500 2017 says he is “very bright and very industrious” and Chambers UK 2018 says he “really knows his stuff and is very analytical. He provides brilliant sensible advice”.

Judith Ayling acts for both claimants and defendants, for receiving and paying parties, and for solicitors and lay clients. She has considerable experience of complex funding questions, including the assignment and novation of CFAs; of detailed assessment and appeals; and of disputes under the Solicitors Act 1974. She appears regularly in the SCCO and the High Court, and is listed in the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners. She has considerable experience in costs issues arising where GLOs have been made or are being considered and in costs capping in GLO cases. She lectures very regularly on costs matters.

Dan Stacey is a co-editor of the latest (4th) 2019 edition of Friston on Costs and edited the Security for Costs chapter. He has very significant experience in all well-known areas of costs litigation, with Lawtel reported cases including commercial retainers/CFAs, disputes under the fixed cost regime, inter partes disputes, challenges under the Solicitors Act 1974 and under the common law/Turner v Palomo jurisdiction, Part 36 issues, and points of principle at detailed assessments. He also frequently assists on the drafting of CFAs, DBAs and other retainer documentation. He is ranked in the Legal 500  (Rank 1) and Chambers & Partners as a leading junior in Costs.

Terms of booking

1. Payment of delegate fees for attendance is required before the date of the conference, otherwise attendance may be refused

2. Replacement delegates are permitted at any time but if they are too close to the conference date, the change may not be reflected in the list of delegates 

3. Delegates wishing to switch from attendance at the conference to viewing the conference live on-line must give one week's notice

4. We operate a no cancellation policy. The only exception is in relation to demonstrable ill-health on the day of the conference. Notwithstanding this we may, at our discretion, offer a credit for the whole or part of the delegate fee paid to be used either towards the costs of a future conference or other event  or in-house training