Fifteen years on from practice rule 15 and six years since the Solicitors' Costs Information and Client-Care Code, it is still surprising that so many practitioners show a reluctance (some a positive resistance) to providing their clients with adequate information about costs.

Although rule 15 and the code pre-date many of the changes that have taken place to the way solicitors practise, particularly the changes in the way publicly funded work is undertaken, their relevance is as great now as it has always been.


The principle could not be simpler. Clients must be given sufficient information to enable them to understand their actual or potential liability for costs at the outset and during the conduct of a matter. However, practitioners will not be surprised to learn that issues about costs feature in the majority of service complaints made to the Law Society.


Adjudicators have dealt with several cases recently where clients, who have been convicted by the Crown Court and made the subject of a recovery of defence costs order, have complained that they were given insufficient information beforehand as to the possibility of such an order being made and/or their potential liability under one. In such circumstances, whether the client is publicly funded or not is immaterial. In most Crown Court matters, there is the potential for such an order to be made, and where it exists clients should be given sufficient information about their own legal costs to enable them to appreciate the situation. Failure to do so would normally be regarded as a material breach of the code and lead to a finding of inadequate professional service.


Another frequent example is in family cases, where the outcome of a case may be significantly affected by the parties' liability for their own or the other party's costs. It is important in such cases, where decisions are often made at financial dispute resolution hearings or immediately prior to final hearings as to whether offers made should be accepted or rejected, that the client has enough information to understand the likely effect of any costs orders that may be made by the court, and/or the effect of the statutory charge on any monies payable or recovered.


Practitioners who undertake publicly funded work are contracted in one form or another to the Legal Services Commission and have, as part of those contractual arrangements, quality requirements, which, in the case of costs information, mirror the requirements of the code. More attention by practitioners to the spirit and letter of those requirements would result in a significant reduction in the number of complaints made.


This column is written by a Law Society adjudicator