Whether you require fixed costs advice, budgeting, billing or advocacy we can help. This applies to both pre and post 1st April 2013 issued claims.
Veritas is a FULLY Independent Legal Costs company, we are NOT a firm of Solicitors (or owned by one) and we ONLY deal with Costs. Your private company knowledge and practices are, and will, remain confidential.
You will find us Professional, competitive and worthy representatives of your firm. Customer loyalty is key to our success, we gain that by working hard for our clients.
There are some interesting nuances to the recent changes. With the new costs rules we find we are, by necessity, becoming involved with cases at an early stage. Previously it was not uncommon for us to first see a case after its conclusion. Now, because of the many rule changes and new requirements, we are often needed to advise and produce documentation during the case. From our point of view, though this work is more spread out and can take longer for us to get paid (just as you often do) it is not such a bad thing. It gives us the opportunity to utilise our professional knowledge, help guide clients and prevent major errors that can negatively impact on your claims. Previously we sometimes wished we had seen (cost related) matters earlier and now we do
Not only can Clinical Negligence claims be quite distressing, they are often more difficult to run and win (e.g. the Bolam test). The difficulties don't cease after the settlement of damages as they also provide their own set of problems when it comes to the subject of costs. Whilst Veritas covers all costs related aspects of this type of work we feel it worth adding that it is the area of billing and negotiation where special care needs to be taken.
We have recently detected an increasing number of spurious arguments being presented by opposing parties in order to sway the costs more in their favour. We are proud to say that, due to our Legal background, we have recently been successful in navigating our clients through these arguments towards better results. Had our opponents been up against a cost company lacking a full professional service without the proper ability to legally interpret these arguments we feel confident that poorer settlements could have resulted.
Although it is difficult, without full evidence to confirm that this is definitively the case, we feel that the prevalence of so many "legally wrong" arguments must surely be the result of a number of them "getting past" the more naive.
One useful additional benefit in doing this is that you are able to reassure your clients that the case has been checked and bill produced by a third party.
Services to Businesses
For businesses we can check and challenge any legal bills you receive (regardless of whether you actually went to court) and fully advise on them.
If you have concerns over a recent legal bill we will give it the once over for you, free of charge and then suggest the optimal way forward. If we believe the bill to be reasonable and unlikely to gain ground on a challenge we will tell you so. If, however, we feel that there is some ground to be made then we will advise on how we can help and offer reasonable terms to act for you. We offer the following assurances:
Veritas is a Professional firm where cases are ONLY dealt with by fully qualified professionals.
Where costs are paid by an estate it is often useful for or clients to be able show to their bill has been assessed and produced by a separate Professional specialist Costs company that has diligently gone through all the case documentation.
It is common ground that Defamation cases require substantial degrees of Legal expertise and yet, when it comes to costs, it is a bone of contention that such expertise, in such amounts was ever required. Paradoxes like these are every day bread and butter to Professional Costs firms. To properly deal with such arguments requires, unsurprisingly, a good degree of legal expertise.
If you have such a case ongoing at the moment, before any major costs decisions are taken, please contact us for some informal free advice and let us demonstrate who helpful we can be.
Veritas provides all the legal costs services for all aspects of Family matters including short form billing or estimates for ancillary relief. We also know how to properly take into account the 1/5th rule.
If it is an own client bill you require it may give your client reassurance that your bill has been produced by a separate specialist company who has reviewed all the records.
Veritas is adept at these kinds of cases with the additional benefit that, by using us early on in the case we can assess issues such as retainers and strategy. We can help to spot early problems with case management or documentation and help to resolve any issue before they become too serious.
We feel that when faced with such a problem there is a risk that some may "fudge" the billing process to a varying degree. To be honest they are left with little choice for to stand a chance off doing the job properly (thus reducing challenge opportunities) you need two things. You need, quite frankly, "Costs Geeks" and you need an I.T. system written specifically to handle apportionment comprehensively. Veritas has both.
Whether Legally Aided, covered by a CFA or by private retainer (or even a mixture of the three) we can provide all the Legal Cost related services you could require for this type of case.
We are fully versed in handling cases of Mesothelioma, noise induced hearing loss and other cases of industrial disease. It is fair to say that no two cases are alike and complexities can easily increase even with what, on the face of it, seems a simple case.
This means that when you do instruct a costs firm to do this kind of work what you need most is trust. Trust that they have the internal processes to cope with such complex cases and trust in the professionalism of those that handle your case. Veritas is called Veritas Professional for a reason, we do not assign juniors or unqualified people to do cost draftsman work, we unfortunately cannot say that is true for all costing firms.
