Fixed Recoverable Costs Reforms

When the FRC draft Rules and Practice Directions were released in early 2023 the ambiguities and lack of clarity were overwhelming. It was obvious the legal profession would be overwhelmed with uncertainty and satellite litigation would increase considerably.

With these concerns very much in mind, Kain Knight Costs Lawyers have developed and launched a bespoke interactive, community driven, platform and a unique FRC Calculator (www.frcconnect.co.uk) to assist lawyers with navigating the choppy waters ahead created by Fixed Recoverable Costs.

Led by Kain Knight Director, Nick McDonnell, the brand and website developers at specialist legal marketing and PR firm, Scala, have helped turn Nick’s ambitious vision into a reality.

“It became apparent very early on that there would be wholesale revisions to the fixed recoverable costs Rules and Practice Directions. Such major revisions were always going to hit Claimants and their legal representatives the most” explains Nick.

“Support and assistance for the legal profession in situations like this is often sporadic and spread across a variety of websites and social media platforms making it difficult to locate that support and may not always address the questions practitioners have. FRC Connect is intended to be a single, online solution that lawyers have been telling us is needed. Demonstrating that there is a need for this type of support, now one month on from its launch, FRCConnect has over 300 subscribers which is fantastic.”

There are 4 key elements to the FRCConnect website including:

FRC Community: a platform that promotes the exchange of knowledge and experiences, collaboration and problem solving, community building and resource sharing. At the heart of the FRCCommunity is the ability for its members to foster connections and facilitate the exchange of information.

FRC Clinic: where members can post comments, questions and concerns and Kain Knight Costs Lawyer will address those in a weekly, live online webinar.

FRC Knowledge Hub: which strives to help the FRC Connect community better understand the Law and Practice surrounding Fixed Recoverable Costs. Through a combination of weekly online training and information videos, ‘live’ webinars, a library of the FRC Clinic sessions, news stories, and thought-leadership articles, the FRC Knowledge Hub supports its members in understanding the latest thinking on dealing with FRC cases.

FRC Calculator: a unique piece of intuitive technology that provides its members with a quick, easy and efficient way of calculating the applicable fixed costs in a given case that can be exported to a document in a variety of formats ready for filing and serving. The calculator enables mathematically accurate FRC costs calculations to be produced that conform with the Tables of Fixed Costs at the PD to CPR.r.45.

Nick concludes “FRCConnect is what we all make it and the more people that are part of the community, the greater the value for its members. The aim ultimately being that together, we are stronger”.