A common question we get is, are inter-fee earner discussions recoverable? Well, the answer is held within Fuseon Ltd v Senior Courts Costs Office & the Lord Chancellor [2020].
In this case, a costs claim arose from a private prosecution by Fuseon Ltd, a Lancashire based letting agency, against a Director of the business who had committed fraud and theft of over £100,000 relating to tenancy deposits, personal expenses and false invoices.
It was directed that the assessment of the Claimant’s costs be remitted to the Senior Costs Master for further directions. The matter came before Master Gordon-Saker who re-heard the appeal, and he determined the following in relation to;
Inter-fee earner discussions / duplication – Detailed guidance was provided in respect of what is and is not recoverable in this regard. It was confirmed that ‘reasonable time spent in inter-fee earner discussions is properly allowable. It is difficult to delegate tasks to junior fee earners without instructing them what to do and the reasonable time of the delegator and delegate is usually now considered to be recoverable. […] On the other hand, two fee earners attending on a witness or the client will rarely be reasonable, unless there is a specific reason. Lawyers should be reasonably adept, like most people, at speaking or listening and writing at the same time. For similar reasons I cannot see that more than one fee earner attending trial, together with Counsel, was reasonably required.’
Non-fee earner work – Items that were disallowed included photocopying (described in the bill as ‘collating extra copies’ and ‘preparing copies’), printing, posting, booking flights, and elements of the bundle preparation such as scanning.
How Can this Case apply to a Court of Protection matter?
There are instances within Court of Protection work that require either the Deputy or a higher grade of fee earner to delegate work to a lower grade of fee earner in order to save costs.
Following the assessment of bills from the SCCO, the Costs Officers were disallowing the application of Fuseon to Court of Protection bills.
This matter was referred to Master Whalan at a Hearing and he determined that Fuseon did apply to Court of Protection matters, however, a written judgement was not published.
Certain aspects of work whereby time may be claimed for delegation could be in relation to;
- Delegation to look into the best or cheapest insurance policies
- Delegation to carry out a property search and providing P’s requirements
- Delegation to consider a holiday request and to source information regarding options available that are within the appropriate budget
Please bear in mind that not all delegation time will be recoverable, please see below some examples;
- Time would not be allowed for time spent delegating a payment request, when only 3 minutes are awarded for the actual payment.
- It would not be reasonable to allow time spent for delegation whereby the actual task would take less time to undertake.
- Time would not be allowed for delegation between the same grade of fee earner.
For more information contact Danielle Walker here.
