Maximising Legal Aid Billing

Speaker: Colin Wells
Chambers: 25 Bedford Row

We are delighted to welcome back Colin Wells this year, offering his wealth of expertise and honed presenting style. Here he presents our members with an expansive legal aid costs billing update, providing best practice advice and practical tips, in detail looking at:

Number of claims
Page count PPE in electronic disk cases
Appeals to the Senior Courts Costs Office
Mandatory use of CE-File
Voluntary use of CE-File
Litigants in person
Cases commenced before 20 January 2020
Format
Transferred cases
Anonymity orders
Applications
Skeleton arguments, chronologies and the like

Relevant law

R v. Hussain [2011] 4 Costs LR 689
R v. Sharif (SCCO 168/13)
R v.Arbas Khan (SCCORef:219/18)
R v. Wharton (SCCO SC-2021-CRI-000195)
R v. Ayomanor (SCCO SC-2020-CRI-000146
R v Garry Moore (SCCO SC- 2022 CRI/002)
R v Liddle, SCCO Ref: SC-2021-CRI-34 (20 July 2021)

Colin specialises in fraud and money laundering. He is regularly instructed to conduct internal investigations and offer compliance advice to companies and local authorities facing issues of wrongdoing.

Coline is a regular speaker to both English and overseas practitioners and law enforcement agencies, covering fraud investigation, search warrants and powers, case management, abuse of process, private prosecutions, deferred prosecution agreements, and sentencing in fraud cases.

Colin’s published work includes: Abuse of Process, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press; and Fraud: a practitioner’s handbook, Bloomsbury 2014.