How to keep litigation costs down - using this technique
I had a client that unfortunately got involved in some litigation despite his best efforts. They were worried about the cost blowout. We got the result they wanted and protected their legal costs using a technique I share in the video.
Got any further questions or know anyone who needs litigation advice, don't hesitate to contact us at Millens Lawyers.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ross Millen:
Hi. I had a client the other day that unfortunately got involved in some litigation despite his best efforts. And I said, "Look, what we'll do is, to give ourselves a bit of protection on legal costs down the track, let's put in a really reasonable without prejudice offer right up front." And he said, "Well, explain to me what that really means." So in litigation, we often play a good cop, bad cop. The bad cop is the litigation itself. "Do this by this state. We're going to file this, we're going to do that." So that's very strict. But then we have a good cop, which is making without prejudice offer, saying, "Look, no one wants to spend all this money on lawyers, and it's taking everyone, distracting them from their normal business. Why don't we just make an offer and everyone will be unhappy, but we'll go our own ways?" And often that's what we try to work on and get for our commercial clients.
But we need to be careful. If we make a ridiculous offer, that'll just... The other side won't accept it and it'll probably just annoy them. Also therefore, we have to protect ourselves by making a reasonable offer. And we do this in a certain way. We use certain expressions, but we say, "Here's our reasonable offer. If you don't accept it and you do worse at the end of the day, hey, you've got to pay our costs from the day we made the reasonable offer." So by pitching a very reasonable offer and the other side rejects it, you can start to protect yourself on legal costs. So it's quite complicated and the cost can be expensive. So we try to make sure that we explain every step, you understand the whole strategy and the tactics behind everything we do. Good cop, bad cop, making offers, trying to get the best commercial result for our clients.
So if you've got any further questions or you know anyone who's interested in understanding more about this topic, don't hesitate to contact us at Millens Lawyers. Thank you.
