[2025] EWHC 2307 (KB)

The Tranche 2 budget allowed for a sum of £15,000 per meeting and which, on the basis of an expected 30 such meetings, allowed for a budget of £450,000. In Tranche 3, the claimants have sought £39,967.50 for each meeting and therefore a total sum of £399,675.00 for what are expected to be 10 meetings. In other words, a similar sum to Tranche 2 is claimed for only a third of the meetings.

In order to achieve this, the claimants provided further information about how the fortnightly meetings had turned out in terms of work to be done. The process was forensically broken down into an eye watering eight stages, ranging from preparing for the pre-progress meeting, to the “post progress meeting de-brief”. The Court has taken well to heart the submissions made about the usefulness of the structure which has emerged during Tranche 2 – indeed the Pre-Progress meetings between the parties (mandated when it became apparent that the parties had not spoken to each other, merely fired hostile letters off at each other) have been one of the drivers of the greatly improved working atmosphere on the case.

However, it cannot be reasonable for the Lead Solicitors to be regularly working for 84 hours per 45 minute meeting. The telling summary provided by the defendants is worth reproducing:

This summary illustrates the collision between over analysis of process and over lawyering. Preparation will be organic – the meetings largely involve dealing with the latest correspondence spats or logistical pinch points. The idea that there is a need for 7 hours of partner time in preparing to talk to the other side about what has happened in the last week or so simply cannot be right. At the meetings there is not a huge variety of speaking parties – the claimants’ Lead Solicitors will each have a single speaking partner; it is hard to imagine that each needs a “supporting cast” of up to 5 people. We would, on reflection, and bearing in mind the way these meetings do progress matters and the value of the Pre-Progress meeting, be minded to allow very slightly more than was originally envisaged, but no more than £17,000 per meeting.

Regarding the defendants’ budgets, the only one which has not been agreed concerns BMW. Their Tranche 2 allowance for dealing with these meetings is £3,300 per meeting (£100,000 in total) and consequently ten times that figure in this phase has been counter proposed after the slightly higher original calculation was rejected. The claimants offer £20,000 representing £2,000 per fortnightly meeting.

Despite the worthwhile nature of these meetings, it is clear that (if the estimates genuinely represent reality) they have become over engineered. The allowed budget for the claimants requires them to look at how they are dealing with these meetings and to scale the process back. The same applies to the defendants and, as such, we think the reduced figure of £2,000 per meeting satisfies that approach rather than remaining with the figure from Tranche 2.