A Practitioner's Guide to Vulnerability and Costs

Making vulnerability visible

Ensuring access to justice

Vulnerability is often unseen, yet its impact on civil litigation is profound. This book shines a light on the additional time, skill and care required to support vulnerable clients and shows how the associated legal costs can and should be fairly accounted for and recovered by legal practitioners who act for them.

Vulnerability and Costs provides practical guidance on identifying vulnerability, recording and justifying the extra, necessary work and navigating the rules on reasonableness, proportionality, fixed recoverable costs and detailed assessment.

Bridging law, practice and humanity, it is an essential resource for costs lawyers, litigators and judges committed to ensuring that access to justice is not just a principle, but a reality.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick McDonnell is a Costs Lawyer with almost 30 years' experience in civil litigation. He is a Director of Kain Knight Costs Lawyers and is a recognised authority on a range of issues concerning costs in civil litigation.

CONTENTS

1 - The Emergence of Vulnerability in Civil Justice

2 - Who is Vulnerable?

3 - Identifying Vulnerability at the Outset of a Claim

4 - Managing Cases Involving Vulnerable Clients

5 - Why Vulnerability Increases Costs

6 - Vulnerability and Solicitor-Client Costs - Part 1 (The Contractual and Commercial Relationship)

7 - Vulnerability and Solicitor-Client Costs - Part 2 (Assessing Vulnerability Under the Solicitors Act 1974)

8 - Recovering Vulnerability-Related Costs - Part 1 (The Evidential Burden)

9 - Recovering Vulnerability-Related Costs - Part 2 (Vulnerability, Costs & Proportionality)

10 - Recovering Vulnerability-Related Costs - Part 3 (Vulnerability and Fixed Recoverable Costs)

11 - Vulnerability Beyond Litigation

12 - The Future of Vulnerability and Costs