A recent study has revealed that litigation spending by companies in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 5yrs.   It seems that regulatory concerns are keeping those tasked with compliance from sleeping at night, with Counsel more likely to be involved in dealing with regulatory requests, investigations and enforcement than investing time and resources in litigation. 

The pressure on litigation budgets is one factor expected to have contributed to the reduction in litigation.  The days of spending significant time and costs on spurious litigation, paying external lawyers sitting in their ivory towers to advise, has passed and clients are demanding real value from their advisers, allowing them to carry out a cost/benefit analysis of any proposed dispute and to proceed with more formal action only where they are confident to do so.

In the current climate clients should expect a much firmer steer on prospects of success from the outset – after all ‘50/50’ is really no advice at all.   Client’s should also be looking for innovation in pricing structures with many gradually moving away from the traditional hourly rate basis for litigation matters and often requiring lawyers to share in their risk.    There are a huge range of funding options available to clients including conditional fee arrangements (CFA), after the event insurance cover (ATE), funding via third parties and damage based agreements - where a percentage of any damages awarded is retained to cover the legal fees.

Whilst not all of these options may be appropriate in each case, with the objective of increasing certainty, providing transparency on fees and ensuring that clients are comfortable that the pricing structure agreed upon is both innovative and flexible, a variety of pricing structures and mechanisms can be considered.

The litigators at Ortolan Legal pride themselves in their ability to provide transparent pricing, clear estimates and regular updates by use of budgeting and cost estimating documents.  This approach not only assists clients in managing cashflow but also in assessing the commercial merits of pursuing litigation.

Therefore, before you discount litigation entirely consider whether there is another way to approach what has historically been seen as an archaic and expensive process and push your lawyers to think and work outside of the box – an innovative approach to an age old issue.