Lord moves to CCCL
Civil & Commercial Costs Lawyers has appointed Jon Lord as Senior Costs Lawyer, following on from Anil Virji’s move into the business as head of costs earlier in the year.
Previously Principal Costs Lawyer at Cost Advocates for almost nine years, Mr Lord is also an accredited mediator and trainer as well as ACL council member.
He said: “The costs world continues to change and develop apace and Civil & Commercial offered me an exciting opportunity to work with them and their great team to further impact the costs landscape.”
Managing director Andrew Thomas said: “We are delighted to welcome Jon to Civil & Commercial Costs Lawyers as a highly regarded member of the profession. He brings with him a wealth of experience in both paying party and receiving party work which will enhance our existing client offering and support our plans for growth and development in this post-Jackson era.”
Owen joins Hampson Hughes
Liverpool personal injury firm Hampson Hughes Solicitors has appointed David Owen as head of costs. He joins from Lawlords, where he was Senior Costs Lawyer and helped set up its Liverpool office.
Prior to this, Mr Owen worked at Keoghs in Bolton as a team leader in the costs recovery department and before that he worked at Compass Law as head of the drafting department.
Mr Owen said: “I will be focusing on training the team and upskilling the department to ensure increased profitability. From a personal point of view, I’m looking forward to working on high-value costs work through the serious injury, clinical negligence and industrial disease departments.”
CCMS enhancements unveiled
The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) has announced two billing enhancements to the Client and Cost Management System (CCMS), which it said was to address user feedback on evidence requests and bills.
The LAA said there were a small number of instances where CCMS users submit more than one payment on account (POA) for the same case, on the same day and for the same value. When the LAA has followed such POAs up with an evidence request, this has led to confusion on which POA the request relates to.
It has now changed the system so that, in such instances, it will provide more information in the evidence request.
On the PDF bill summary, the LAA said users had asked for it to be made easier to review. As a result, the bill “now has a more logical structure with items displayed in chronological order”.
The LAA said these changes preceded a further billing enhancement involving the introduction of a progress bar so that users can track where they are, sections indicating what they have completed and the ability to jump pages.