A Match Made in Heaven?

Even for lawyers February can mean only one thing, Valentine's Day! And we at Taylor Rose are celebrating this most romantic of days by sharing how our costs team and their clients have created the perfect relationship.

You may remember our costs division as Jaggards Legal Costs Consultants. Jaggards was a well-known leading name in the costs world for almost two decades before merging in 2015 to become part of Taylor Rose , an independent top 200 firm with even more ambitious employees and efficient working practices. The firm remains one of the leading suppliers of legal costs services representing clients such as Allianz, AXA, MIB, NFU Mutual and QBE and has consistently featured in the legal news with *landmark costs cases.

Our team of costs experts settled 4186 cases saving our clients a total over £16.3m in 2017. And if that wasn’t impressive enough we checked the archives and can reveal that we settled a massive 148,792 cases over the last ten years saving £444m. We’re sure our clients would agree that’s slightly better than receiving a dozen red roses from their partner!

This continued success is the legacy of Jaggards which was founded by solicitor Adrian Jaggard, one of the foremost members of the civil and costs litigation industry. Adrian’s credentials are impeccable. He often works closely with national insurers and compensators to establish their claims strategy, is a member of the Civil Justice Council Costs Committee, and also provides support to the Ministry of Justice, Civil Justice Council and the Association of British Insurers for the development of legislation. Adrian, when not being Taylor Rose TTKW’s leader and visionary, acts as a trustee on the board for our nominated charity partner Little Miracles.

Matthew Hoe, the firm’s Director of Litigation and Dispute Resolution, heads up the costs department and is a well-known and respected practitioner in the field. Matthew is a solicitor with higher rights of audience for advocacy in civil proceedings. He has specialised in legal costs for over ten years and has acted in more than a hundred costs appeals, with, we can say with pride, considerable success. Matthew is a member of the Costs Sector Focus Team with the industry body FOIL and is truly professional at all times, except perhaps when members of the team bring their canine friends into the office, when he turns to mush.

Working alongside Matthew is David Cooper, a widely respected Chartered Legal Executive and Costs Lawyer. He is knowledgeable on a diverse range of legal topics, and enthusiastically shares his many years legal experience at seminars and conferences across the UK. David, whether at work or not, has a particular specialism in eating homemade cake.

Our experts also specialise in negotiating low and high value personal injury claims for costs. One of our team members, Sophie, has experience in judicial review and immigration costs with her regularly undertaking her own advocacy in the County Court. In addition the costs budgeting team can expertly prepare costs budgets and provide analysis of third party costs budgets. The team dedicated to this essential element, Nicola and Amy, work to strict deadlines, undertaking telephone and written negotiations, and preparation of documentation for court and managing and prioritising individual case load. And last but no means least our costs drafting expert Catherine is a Chartered Legal Executive and puts her ten years experience to good use by routinely drafting bills and schedules of costs for our clients, efficiently taking the claim for costs through the entire detailed assessment process, that is when she is not organising our charity and social events.

Although we provide services to other sectors such as Utilities, and have experience of working with travel industry clients, our vast experience in insurance legal costs has meant that we have established a costs centre of excellence for the insurance sector nationwide with a comprehensive list of clients. We have a great working relationship with all of our clients and consider many of them to be friends in business. Many of our clients are long standing and continue to work with Taylor Rose because of the expertise and experience of our team, the results we deliver and our value added services.

We are passionate about what we do, we are devoted to our clients, and (did we mention we saved our clients £16.3m last year?) we love saving money!

We would also love to work with you too! For more information on how you can save money on your legal costs, or for any queries relating to costs and new business, please ask to speak to one of our costs experts.

*Footnote

• TAG test cases

• Claims Direct Test Cases [2002] EWCA Civ 428

• Nizami v Butt [2006] 1 WLR 3307

• Kilby v Gawith [2008] EWCA Civ 812

• Solomon v Cromwell Group [2011] EWCA Civ 1584

• Dockerill & Healey v Tullett [2012] EWCA Civ 184

• Tasleem v Beverley [2013] EWCA Civ 1805

• Costin v Merron [2013] 3 Costs LR 391

• Engeham v London and Quadrant Housing Trust [2015] EWCA Civ 1530

• Bird v Acorn Group Ltd [2016] EWCA Civ 1096

• Hislop v Perde (pending in Court of Appeal)