FUNDING OPTIONS

Innovative approach

Typically in English litigation, claimants are faced with three sources of costs: paying their own solicitors’ fees; paying for their own disbursements (such as barristers, economists and experts); and shouldering the risk of an adverse costs ruling (under English procedure the losing party has to pay the winning party's legal costs, which can be significant).

We have assembled a menu of funding options for our clients to choose from in order to minimise, if not eliminate, each of these three costs risks whenever possible.

Our fees

In appropriate cases we are prepared to operate under a conditional fee agreement, sometimes known as a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement. Under a conditional fee arrangement, we record the time we spend on your behalf in a case and will subsequently seek to recover the cost of that time along with a success fee element from the defendant, in the event we succeed at trial or on settlement. If we are unsuccessful in the case we do not charge a fee. In addition to conditional fee agreements, we are willing to explore other types of fee models on a case by case basis.

Disbursements

In major litigation, the cost of disbursements can often be substantial. We have a number of mechanisms in place that can be used to externally fund the costs of disbursements. We also have a number of existing relationships with trusted providers of litigation services which often allows us to secure preferential, or conditional, rates for our clients.

Adverse costs risks

The risk of paying the winning party’s costs in litigation is one of the key considerations in embarking on litigation in England. In order to minimise this risk on behalf of our clients, the Firm, working in conjunction with FirstAssist Insurance Group, has created the ‘Cartel Key’ insurance product for use in appropriate cases. Cartel Key is an after the event insurance (“ATE”) product designed to cover the cost of paying our client’s opponent’s cost in the event we are unsuccessful in litigation.

The ATE insurance premium is both deferred (not payable until after Judgment in the case) and contingent (only payable in the event the claim is successful). So if the case is lost, Cartel Key will cover the adverse costs, so the client will not pay these costs and no premium is payable. If the claim is successful, the premium is payable but is recoverable from the defendant. The result of this protection is that the client will not have to pay any adverse costs.

We are also well positioned to investigate alternative forms of insurance arrangementsfor clients where the Cartel Key product is unsuitable.

In summary

This model has three distinct advantageous features:

1. The Client can remove (i) the risk of paying its own legal costs and (ii) any material risk of paying any part of its disbursements, win or lose.

2. If insured under Cartel Key, the Client has no risk of paying the adverse costs or disbursements risk, win or lose.