We prepare both 3 column and the new COP E-bills to suit our clients needs, we also prepare short form Bills of Costs for Profit Costs under £3,000. What we need from you:

In order to prepare your bills for assessment we ideally need:

Once we have received your file, this will then be allocated to one of our Court of Protection draftsmen or Costs Lawyers who will draft your bill, providing you with a draft bill, any missing attendance notes that need to be provided and advice regarding likely recovery.

Your specialist will then work with you to ensure you are happy and satisfied with the bill before signature and submission. We also ensure that all attendance notes are provided and added to your files to ensure maximum recovery.

Turnaround

We aim to have all bills under £10,000 profit costs returned within 10 working days, bills with profit costs up to £35,000 within 15 working days and anything above this we will provide a turnaround time upon enquiry or instruction.

Fees

We always cap our fees for bill preparation at the amount allowed by the SCCO, we will never charge more that what is deemed reasonable. We have found that generally this is 6% of Profit Costs claimed for bills under £35,000 profit costs and then 6.5% of Profit Costs claimed for bills over £35,000 profit costs. Our fees are of course recoverable from P.

At RC Legal Solutions we take the stress out of the CE filing system and e-file all your bills, papers and FCC’s on your behalf.

This includes ensuring your papers get to the court, if your papers are physical then we use our in-house courier drivers to deliver the files to the court. If your files are electronic then we can upload them to the Document Upload Centre for you. This comprises ensuring your papers comply with the SCCO guidance on electronic files.

Both these services allow us to take the strain off our clients and ensure that rejections are avoided, time delays are cut down and that all documentation is uploaded in the correct format.

We also liaise with the court throughout, this may be chasing up filings that have not yet been approved, ensuring bills are being assessed within the SCCO timeframes and dealing with any other requests from the court.

If you have any questions or queries about CE-Filing or the Document Upload Centre please contact Megan at megan@rclegalsolutions.co.uk, or request our updated training webinar. Additionally, we can provide on-site/remote training specifically for CE-Filing and other COP issues.

The introduction of the electronic bill means that bills once assessed are automatically recalculated, if you request the traditional bill of costs then of course we will recalculate it on your behalf.

Now once assessments are received, we provide you with advice regarding areas where reductions have been made, whether the reductions that have been made are reasonable and if they are not, then we provide you with the likely outcome of pursuing an appeal, firstly to the assessing officer, but then formally if required.

We collate data across all of our clients meaning that we can provide you with the best advice, giving you reassurance that you have achieved the best recovery. We compare your assessment against all other client assessments making it very easy to identify areas that have been unreasonably reduced.

If you are happy with the assessment, we can then prepare the FCC and file that on your behalf.

Firstly, if you decide to go ahead with an appeal on the grounds we have advised upon then we will prepare a letter of appeal that is then approved to you and then we will submit this to the SCCO on your behalf.

If the bill is then re-assessed and you are not happy with the outcome then a formal appeal will be needed and a hearing requested, again we will write a letter that then needs to be approved by you and submit this on your behalf.

Once the hearing has been listed then we will attend the hearing (either in person or remotely) and the bill we be re-assessed and the final outcome of the hearing will the be reported to you.

We offer specialised bespoke reporting for each client, to ensure our clients know exactly what stage each matter is at. This includes reporting on turnaround times, submission dates to the SCCO, recovery on assessments and recurring themes/points made by costs officers on assessments.

This allows us to not only be completely transparent with our clients, but also to collate data and statistics that we can then advise upon, to ensure the best recovery is being reached.

For more information about reports that can be provided, please contact Megan at megan@rclegalsolutions.co.uk

We provide a range of highly specialised training sessions focused on cost recovery in the Court of Protection. We host these both online and in-person depending on your needs. We also host an annual conference for practitioners both new and experienced to keep up to date with the Court of Protection cost world.