BL-2023-BRS-000024 - [2025] EWHC 2898 (Ch)

Some 263 hours is claimed for work done on documents. This includes 43 hours “reviewing core contractual documents”, when the only significant contractual document was the JCT contract. It also includes 37 hours “reviewing all court documents”, although the statements of case and court orders run only to 43 pages. It includes 43 hours “reviewing Defendants documents”, and 25 hours carrying out “Disclosure tasks”. It appears that the defendants’ disclosure amounted to 23 documents, but the claimant’s disclosure ran to 2671. Some 80 hours are claimed in respect of “Preparing witness statements”. The defendants in fact produced three witness statements, running to some 32 substantive pages. 30 hours are claimed for “Reviewing Claimants witness statements”. Those witness statements ran to 12 pages of substantive evidence. Lastly, five hours are claimed in respect of “Bundle Preparation”, although the substantive burden of preparing the trial bundle fell upon the claimants, not the defendants.

All these figures seem to me to be extraordinarily high in the context of this relatively straightforward claim. And I am the more concerned, because all of this work on documents was done by the two partners, and none at all by the two associates. I would have expected it to be the other way round, with only a small amount of partner input as supervision of more junior colleagues. For all of these reasons, a further reduction will have to be made in the notional profit costs.