The New Electronic Bills are finally here, is your firm ready for the digital revolution?

April the 6^th 2018, saw the dawn of the digital era in costs litigation and assessment of Multi-Track personal injury claims. The idea for electronic bill of costs in civil litigation goes as far back as 2009 and was first mooted by Sir Rupert Jackson in his “Review of Civil Litigation Costs: Final Report 2009”. Sir Rupert Jackson argued that the traditional 8 column Bill of Costs was in more ways than one very much outdated. The New Format Electronic Bill of Costs (also known as the Precedent S) is entirely different in respect of its presentation, contents, length, level of transparency and detail and also the method of its assessment by the Courts vastly differs from the traditional assessment. The new electronic bills will also need to be filed and served in a self-calculating electronic format so as to allow automatic and immediate recalculation of the Bill by the Defendant and the Court at detailed assessment.

It has been documented and extensively lobbied that the new electronic bills will offer more transparency and a comprehensive breakdown of the costs being claimed, the Bill will also harmonise the procedures and systems i.e costs budgeting, costs management, summary assessment and detailed assessment. Finally, the new electronic bills are at least on paper more user friendly to those with a good understanding of Ms excel and the Bill itself is of course a self-calculating document.

Under the new rules, all items claimed need to be dated (including routine communications), there is also the tedious requirement to allocate each item into 15 different litigation phases, 41 different tasks and 15 different activities. As time go by, as firms and Judges get to grips and acquaint themselves with the electronic bills, there is no doubt that the introduction of the same will as time goes have far reaching and wider implications, which will not just be limited to the cost litigation process but also impact the ways in which firms’ case management systems operate and record and export fee earning time.

The logic behind the unfortunate demise of the traditional paper bills are at least in theory easy to perceive and understand. The 21^st Century is exponentially building itself as the beginning of the digital era. Our day to day and working lives are predominately dominated and managed by electronic mechanism, hardwares and systems. The vast majority of law firms opened in the last 15 years operate a completely paperless policy, documentation and files are now securely stored and recorded on sophisticated case management systems, some of which are able to generate costs summaries, ledgers or schedules at a press of button.

In such a digital era, one cannot therefore blame Sir Rupert Jackson’s vision to bring the costs litigation into the digital age. The overall intention for the introduction of the electronic bills is to produce a bill directly from the case management system with very minimal input from costs draftsman and thereby saving time, expenses and no doubt result in less papers being printed or lodged at Court

Unfortunately, as is often the case, putting the theory into practice has so far proved harder than Sir Rupert Jackson may have envisaged. By way of comparison with the traditional bill of costs, the electronic bills are way more expensive to implement, too complex to work with, too time consuming to prepare and at least 2 or 3 times larger in size in comparison with the old style bills.

Here at Dynamic Costs, we strongly believe that adapting to changes is vital for survivor in any industry or walk of life. In light of this and to ensure that our clients are fully prepared for the challenges and changes ahead, we have been providing training sessions and seminars. For more information, please book or arrange a consultation by reaching out to our team through our contact form here.