Barclays pushes firms to embrace flexi-billing

I think banks should be more careful which private practice lawyers they allow into their departments. Whilst secondments reduce cost to a bank in terms of salary which would otherwise have to be paid to an employee, they are taking on other risks. Such secondees have access to inside knowledge of the banks, which once leaked to the law firms they come from will leave the bank ultimately disadvantaged to getting the best value for money from their external lawyers in the future.

Anonymous -14 May 2009 | 21:24

Fixed cost litigation is unworkable because there is no way to determine the true scope of work at the start of an engagement. So much depends on the evidence, positions taken by the opposing parties, amendments, the need for interlocutories etc. So many variables can't be anticipated and catered for at the start. Fixed fees will only cause lawyers to limit the time they spend on a case based on what they will be paid. Standards of services will be defined by minimum effort rather than maximum capability. The only way to manage costs properly is for clients to closely monitor the work done in the progress of cases. Clients too often transfer all responsibility to their lawyers forgetting that it is their dispute. Lawyers don't create disputes, we just try to solve them.

Nahendran Navaratnam -16 May 2009 | 13:06

It is, frankly, all too easy for an in-house head of litigation to say that their external lawyers should be able to fix the cost of litigating. Fixed cost has a lot of attraction from a bank's perspective. What they are really saying is that their lawyers have to fix their cost by reference to a "notional case" , and then take the risk that the case doesn't fit that model (given the range of what banks do, how many would?). But how can a firm judge that before seeing even a scrap of paper? Just whose case is it? Whose witnesses may not come up to proof? Whose documents may be problematic or incomplete? How can you judge something that may turn on expert evidence of some kind? And above all, whose decision to litigate or not is it? These risks are an inherent part of litigating and should be part of the decision as to whether to litigate in the first place. And if its so easy to fix the cost, why don't the banks come up with a figure themselves (they know their cases better than any external lawyer- or at least they should!), and say "we'll pay you £X"? The answer is because its not as easy as they suggest. They prefer to say that and let law firms slug in out on rates in an auction style process that gets the cheapest rate. They should be careful , especially now. We all know the saying about peanuts and monkeys.

Private Practice -02 Jun 2009 | 15:27