K ON N E C T POWERED BY
Transforming the relationship between fee earners & Costs Lawyers
Revolutionising the relationship between Costs Lawyers and Solicitors
The ever-changing landscape Finally, all the pieces of the puzzle are in place: Budgeting (April 2013), J-Codes (September 2014) and following years of work and consultation at the most technical level, the new Bill format arrived in October 2015.
Jackson & Costs: A call to arms 106 A new format of bill of costs should be devised, which will be more informative and capable of yielding information at different levels of generality.
107 Software should be developed which will (a) be used for time recording and capturing relevant information and (b) automatically generate schedules for summary assessment or bills for assessment as and when required. The long term aim must be to harmonise the procedures and systems which will be used for costs budgeting, costs management, summary assessment and detailed assessment.
Review of Civil Litigation Costs: Final Report – Jackson LJ, December 2009
For the uninitiated in all things costs, this is a significant change to the way a litigator goes about their daily routine and the most dramatic development in the costs litigation landscape since Michael Kain kick-started the industry back in 1976.
Impact on practice, process & profits Essentially – should Jackson LJ see the Eureka moment in all that he proposed – the changes mean this: a litigator sets their own budget, records all their recoverable time meticulously using J-codes through their PMS, monitors their time against the budget accordingly and then imports the J-Coded time into the new Bill excel document via XML, et voila – a court accepted Bill of Costs available for summary or detailed assessment at the click of a button. Whilst all the elements are now in place, and have been designed for universal adoption across the industry, there are a few notable problems in the delivery of effective budgeting and the production of the new Bill for a litigator: PMS/software manipulation, training in J-Codes and recoverable inter parties’ costs, the application of any court orders and most importantly the appropriate time and inclination of a busy litigator to adhere with all of the above.
Konnect: The key to Precedent H control & profitability
“ Ultimately Konnect will revolutionise the relationship between fee earners and Costs Lawyers – its primary aim to remove almost all of the proposed burden from
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litigation teams and leave them to do what they do best: litigate.
A partnership dedicated to you Kain Knight, as a market leader, has been working hard to address the changes since they were proposed back in 2013. Budgeting alone redefined the working relationship with our clients, bringing our skills to the beginning of a case rather than at the end. Clearly we had to embrace the proposed new costs landscape and needed to work even more closely with our clientele; all realistic options had to utilise appropriate software by necessity. LHQ was selected as a partner after much market research. It was initially established as a business for a multi-jurisdictional group action where a panel of 150 law firms’ time records needed to be scrutinised in real time. It has been further developed specifically for law firm use in financial matter management to comply with the Jackson requirements and has future relevant application across the whole law firm. LHQ provides a market leading software solution for budget creation, monitoring, matter pricing and profitability analysis, Precedent H production and, once finalised, the new Bill. LHQ operates in the cloud in real time and is capable of integration with all time recording and PMS systems. This established platform proved to be the most effective partner for Kain Knight’s considerable costs expertise. The Konnect partnership programme was duly realised in the Summer of 2015.
Your in-house revolution Konnect is a unique offering in the industry in its pairing of legal costs expertise and efficient software. It enables Kain Knight to deliver its services effectively as an in-house resource. We can construct the budget using LHQ real-time across the internet – with Counsel/experts all able to join a conference/telephone conference and see the budget as it is populated.
Once set Kain Knight can remotely monitor the budget using LHQ to retrieve data from the client’s PMS and then apportion against the budget, therefore giving extra security to the budgeting process. Kain Knight fee earners can monitor budgets under a traffic-light regime, with email alerts should a client’s budget approach its phase total.
Clear, on demand & bespoke to you Kain Knight can then discuss options if the level of spend is unanticipated and offer solutions, such as a possible applications to amend. As the J-coded time has been calculated and assigned throughout the life of the case by the Kain Knight file handler, it is possible to produce a court accepted costs update/ schedule or phased Budget update at short notice, or most importantly: as the court requires. Ultimately the new Bill of Costs can then be produced – at a reduced production cost compared with the current Bill – utilising Kain Knight’s expertise and LHQ Software.
For more information about Konnect, please contact: Nicholas Clark Business Development Director Kain Knight Carpenters’ Hall, 1 Throgmorton Avenue, London, EC2N 2JJ Tel: 0207 826 9055 Nicholas.Clark@kain-knight.co.uk
LHQ is a web-based platform designed to provide an effective way of controlling costs, analysing profitability and managing resources for law firms, barristers and corporations recognising their differing priorities and operating environments. For Law firms LHQ provides a Jackson compliant total budgeting, pricing and resourcing solution for implementation across the whole firm on all budget aspects including current and historic profitability analysis. For corporates LHQ provides an economic methodology to manage their panel law firms and enables effective control of major pieces of litigation. For Barristers LHQ enables Counsel to manage their matters productively and profitably in collaboration with their instructing law firms.
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Disclaimer Consistent with our policy when giving comment and advice on non-specific issues, Kain Knight cannot assume legal responsibility for the accuracy of any particular statement. In the case of specific problems it is recommended that professional advice be sought from your normal contact.
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