Costs Budgeting for Claimant Solicitor Firms
A costs budget is not a form-filling exercise. For the phases it covers, the approved or agreed budget becomes the principal control on what is recovered at the end of the claim, and the court will not depart from it without good reason. Work done well after the budget is set is still judged against a document prepared early, often before the shape of the claim is clear.
That is why the assumptions matter more than the totals. A phase total with nothing behind it is difficult to defend at the CCMC and difficult to rely on at assessment.
What We Prepare
- Precedent H budgets, phase by phase;
- the assumptions that support each phase;
- incurred costs review and presentation;
- estimated costs for the remaining phases;
- Precedent R budget discussion reports;
- Precedent T applications where a budget needs varying; and
- bills drawn to read against the approved budget.
What We Do Not Do
We do not attend costs and case management hearings. DMD Costs is drafting-only support and provides no advocacy: we prepare the budget and the material behind it so that whoever attends can defend each phase, but the hearing itself is for the instructing firm, counsel or a Costs Lawyer. If you are weighing that up, we set out the difference between a costs draftsman and a Costs Lawyer, including which one we are.
Delegating costs work to an unauthorised provider is settled law rather than a convention: the Court of Appeal confirmed in CILEX v Mazur that tasks within the conduct of litigation may be carried out for and on behalf of an authorised individual who retains direction, control and responsibility.
Where Budgets Are Most Often Challenged
The recurring weaknesses are the same across practice areas: expert phases that do not say how many disciplines are assumed, disclosure phases that do not state the expected volume, witness and quantum phases carried over from a precedent, and trial preparation left as a round figure. Each is answerable if the assumption is written down at the time.
Clinical negligence is where this bites hardest, because the claim is expert-heavy and the budget is set before causation is fully understood. Our practitioner guide to costs budgets and the CCMC deals with the assumptions phase by phase, and what happens to the budget at detailed assessment covers the other end of the process.
Budgeting Across the Three Practice Areas
Budgeting is a deliverable rather than a practice area, and the same work supports all three of ours: clinical negligence costs, housing disrepair costs and MoD NIHL costs. Where a claim is costs-managed, the budget and the eventual bill are the same argument made twice, and they should be prepared by people who will see both ends of it.
Who Leads This Work
Costs budgeting at DMD Costs is led by Diellza Nika, Managing Director, who has more than 15 years’ experience in legal costs.
We do not publish case results we have not produced. What we offer as evidence is the experience behind the work, named responsibility for it, and technical guidance you can check against the rules yourself.
Fixed Fee Agreed Before Instructions
The fee is fixed and agreed before any work begins, so the cost of preparing the budget is known before you instruct. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, our agreed fee is payable when your firm receives the recovered costs from the paying party.