Peter has been kindly invited by The Legal Training Consultancy to speak on this subject at their 6th Annual Legal Costs Law and Practice Update conference on 7th October 2026.
Click here for further details.
There are three obvious circumstances in which a claimant, sometimes referred to as the “now claimant”, might seek to recover legal costs as damages in a professional negligence claim against a firm of solicitors.
The first is where the now claimant previously instructed the solicitors in a transaction which either failed completely or turned out to be flawed.
The second is where that failure or flaw led to litigation between the now claimant and a third party. The now claimant may have been the defendant to a claim by the third party (hence the expression “now claimant”) or attempted to mitigate his or her loss by suing that third party. He or she may have incurred irrecoverable litigation costs, been ordered to pay costs to the third party or some combination of the two.
The third circumstance is where the solicitors’ negligence has deprived the client of an opportunity to pursue or defend litigation, one consequence of this being a waste of costs. The original claim may have been allowed to become statute barred or been struck out by reason of some failure to comply with the rules.
As to the second circumstance, there is currently a serious difficulty in the law as to the basis on which the now client should be entitled to recover costs. As to the third, there are conceptual complexities in assessing the true value of what has been lost.
