Parties embroiled in litigation often has to call on the expertise of their Counsel to consider the evidence at hand for trial purposes. The question that now arises is : Whether the costs of employing Counsel to consider and give advice on evidence is recoverable from the other side should a party be successful and be […]

As many Attorneys may be aware, the sometimes unavoidable Rule 43 proceedings that follow matrimonial proceedings can easily take up more of the Attorney and Counsel’s time than the actual divorce case itself. To add salt to the wound, the costs of conducting Rule 43 proceedings almost always exceed those of the divorce proceedings by […]

The relationship between a Client and an Attorney is really the same as that of a principal and a special agent. The agent is entitled to be remunerated, but as an Attorney is an Officer of the Court, if called upon to do so, the Court retains the right to decide what a fair and […]

You may have heard the concept of ‘cloud-based computing’ or ‘cloud-based application’ being used for some time now. You’d be forgiven for not knowing too much about what this entails, however, because a coherent definition in laymen’s terms can be elusive. ‘Cloud’ is simply a nickname for the Internet, and so the term lends itself […]

We find that often when in a taxation situation (whether presenting or opposing a bill), many attorneys and their PAs or clerks still struggle with the question of the proper principle upon which costs should and should not be taxed. When dealing with Party and Party costs the situation is fairly straight forward: one party […]

So, you have been successful for your client, have obtained a cost order in their favour and are at Taxation to recover all of the costs you incurred during your efforts. Chances are you will be in for a bit of a shock as the Taxing Master, on the day, may well disagree with many […]

Our clients continue to pose interesting questions to the Pick our Brain section of our website. This week, someone raised a concern that lack of compliance with section 4 of the Contingency Fee act can have a significant impact on legal billings. We explore the issue in more detail below. Since the introduction of the […]

It’s all too common, especially in complicated matters, that one or both of the parties finds themselves employing the services of two Counsel, the costs of which usually end up being substantial, whether the case was won or lost. As per Rule 69, a party does not need a special order or permission to employ […]

On a weekly basis we hear horror stories of attorneys who failed to bill clients correctly for recoverable expenses. If this happens once or twice, it might not have a meaningful impact. But if it happens regularly, the knock- on effect on cashflow could cause an otherwise sound business to fail. We’ve put together some […]

We recently had a very interesting and important question from a client in the https://bills-of-cost.co.za/pick-our-brain/Pick our Brain section of our website. It dealt with the duplum rule as per Section 101 (1) g of the National Credit Act which, in short, determines that a Registered Credit Provider may not recover more than the original capital […]