Managing and controlling legal spend is important for our clients, so we work closely with them to help formulate their strategy using a variety of tools and techniques. We call this our specialist Legal Spend Management Service (LSMS). We provide advice, support and recommendations in a number of different areas that go beyond the traditional costs offering:
Providing Superior MI
We provide MI reporting tailored to clients’ specific needs.
We review both individual client performance against KPIs and also provide a comparison with our experience of the market.
We provide advice to manage and reduce our clients’ overall legal spend in relation to opponents’ costs, own solicitors’ costs and in-house claims handling costs, by analysing and improving claims outcomes for our clients.
We handle thousands of claims for costs each year and capture detailed information in relation to all aspects of the costs claimed, the nature of the claim, the issues throughout the course of the litigation and the level of damages in issue.
We are able to use this information, together with our extensive banks of historic data to provide bespoke management information required to analyse legal spend and reduce costs to your business. Examples include:
- Monitoring claims handling both in-house and by panel solicitors
- Providing detailed analysis of claims outcomes to improve future strategy
- Identifying areas, levels and causes of costs leakage
- Improving accuracy of estimates of both sides’ costs and overall reserves
- Increasing focus on overall legal spend, including both sides’ costs rather than damages alone
Strategic planning
Using the MI we provide, we make proposals for costs saving strategies, together with subsequent monitoring and reporting to ensure your objectives are met.
Panel Solicitor Auditing
We provide an auditing service in relation to our clients’ own legal service providers and can provide advice and assistance on appropriate retainers with their own legal service providers, to ensure that whilst reasonable costs are paid there is reduced scope for disproportionate costs or costs leakage.
Training
We provide training tailored to our clients’ needs to improve claims outcomes. We offer training on all aspects of costs, particularly the changes implemented by the Jackson reforms.
Training we regularly run for clients includes:
- The handing of specific costs issues that have been identified as problem areas, resulting in costs leakage
- Raising claims handler awareness of costs issues and how claims handling impacts on costs
- Combating Claimant solicitor tactics in escaping the MOJ portal and avoiding fixed costs
- Providing an overview of costs issues and important changes to the law
- Handling fixed costs issues in-house
- Costs budgeting
Costs Helpline
Providing advice in relation to costs issues whenever it is required during the conduct of a claim on a complimentary basis.
Secondment
We have undertaken secondments with our clients to allow us to better understand their specific operations or for them to understand ours.
