When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

[Craig32]

Hi Folks,

A pretty basic question I have here...

When you go ahead with court against a former employer, and you happen to lose the case, how long do you wait until you are giving a final figure of legal expenses due?

Will the judge immediately give a number at the end of the case, or...?

[FlamingParrot]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

Hi Folks,

A pretty basic question I have here...

When you go ahead with court against a former employer, and you happen to lose the case, how long do you wait until you are giving a final figure of legal expenses due?

Will the judge immediately give a number at the end of the case, or...?

Hi and welcome aboard

Are you referring to the respondent costs? In the ET each side pays their own legal costs and costs are not usually awarded against the losing party. There are exceptions but only around 1% of ET claimants who lose have costs orders against them, and these are cases where they have been unreasonable or bring a claim that has no merit whatsoever. In awarding costs, the judge would take into account whether the respondent's solicitors issued costs warnings early in the process, warning the claimant of the potential for costs and giving them an opportunity to withdraw the claim before further costs were incurred.

Costs have to be assessed so you wouldn't have a figure right away if they were awarded and, when it comes to the ET, it can take months just to get a judgment after a preliminary hearing.

[Craig32]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

Thanks for that.

I am currently in the process of taking my former employee to court, and figured it would be best to ask here, as any correspondence with my lawyer is now being charged by the time taken, or words typed.

My lawyer has just served them with the papers to take this to court, and this was one of the questions I forgot to ask him.

He did try to suggest I would be best lowering my demand and going to a small claims court. I was foolishly greedy at the time, and told him I wanted the full costs I believed I was due (£7.5k). So now I am in court with huge exposure, and I was just trying to get a feel for when I would find out the costs due.

[teaboy2]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

When you say taking them to court do you mean ET? Small claims can take claims up to £10K i believe!

[Craig32]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

Sorry, what is ET short for?

[teaboy2]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

Sorry, what is ET short for?

Employment Tribunal.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

When you say taking them to court do you mean ET? Small claims can take claims up to £10K i believe!

Yes, that's right, and usually each party pays its own legal costs, as in the Employment Tribunal, unless your behaviour is regarded as unreasonable.

[stevemLS]

Re: When Do You Find Out Your Legal Costs?

Yes, that's right, and usually each party pays its own legal costs, as in the Employment Tribunal, unless your behaviour is regarded as unreasonable.

With the exception of court fees and (minimal) fixed solicitors costs in some cases.

We need to know a bit more about the context in order to give any proper suggestions, is this an action just for the recovery of costs? What was the substantive claim about? Has that been concluded and if so, why did the court/tribunal dealing with it not deal with the issue of costs?

If it is for costs incurred in an ET (and the fact that defendant is employer does not necessarily mean it is, it could be a PI/EL claim?) and you have now issued separate proceedings, I suspect that would be seen as an abuse of process.