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Minister McEntee welcomes first report and strategic plan of the Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicators

The Minister for Justice and Equality, Helen McEntee TD, today welcomed the 2019 Annual Report of the Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator which she has laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas.  Similarly, she also welcomes the laying and publication of the Office’s first Strategic Plan 2020-2023. These reports mark the coming into operation of the new Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicators established on 7th October 2019.

In welcoming this development the Minister stated,

“This first Report and Strategic Plan represent a landmark for the new Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator. The Office is a key structural reform introduced in relation to legal costs under the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 with the active support of the Courts Service. It has delivered the modernisation of the old Taxing-Master function, making it more transparent in its decision-making processes. This has been augmented with new management and accountability structures under the stewardship of the Chief Legal Costs Adjudicator, Mr. Paul Behan.”

The mission of the Office is to enable access to the independent, impartial and objective resolution of legal costs disputes through the provision of a courteous and professional service in the performance of its statutory functions. The Office also endeavours to maintain and provide transparency throughout the adjudication process, with reasoned outcomes being published and accessible via the register of determinations, so as to inform both legal practitioners and the public.

Minister McEntee said,

We now have greater transparency in how legal costs determinations are being made. The Adjudicators’ Office makes details of its key determinations publicly available in the Register of Legal Costs Determinations. The basis on which its determinations can be made are also informed, for the first time in legislation, by a set of Legal Costs Principles set out in Schedule  1 of the 2015 Act. At the same time, under section 150 of that Act, additional transparency obligations have been placed on both solicitors and barristers in relation to the better notification of legal costs and their potential implications to their clients.