Job description
Cost Draftsperson
NewLaw Solicitors is one of the UK’s most innovative and fastest growing law firms, specialising in all areas of personal injury law from whiplash claims to clinical negligence and catastrophic injury cases to Welfare, Wills, Trusts, Court of Protection and Probate. We believe that what we do makes a real difference to the lives of our clients, and the role of Cost Draftsperson is integral to ensuring that we can do just that.
We have an exciting opportunity to join our Costs team as a Cost Draftsperson / Costs Lawyer to deal with a wide scope of costs requirements; to ensure that costs are managed effectively via the cost budgeting process, levels of costs recovered are maximised with cases accurately costed.
Job Role: Costs Draftsperson
Hours: 37.5 hours a week
Location: Fully remote / Hybrid if you’re local to our Cardiff office
Benefits:
- 25 days’ annual leave + bank holidays, increasing on an annual basis to 27 days
- Gym flex & Gym discounts
- Salary sacrifice car scheme
- Share Save Scheme
- Benefits Hub (store discounts)
- Cycle to work scheme
- Eye care vouchers
- Help@hand: Remote GP; Second Opinion; Mental Health Support; Physiotherapy Support; Life, Money & Wellbeing Support.
- Cancer assist: Offers in-the-moment cancer guidance from an experienced team of client navigators who are there to help at any stage of the cancer journey.
- Season Ticket Loan
- Recommend a friend referral scheme
- Discount on Legal Services
- Holiday sell and carryover scheme
- Dress for your day policy
- Training and development opportunities
- BUPA dental plan (EE funded)
- Westfield Health Cash plan (EE funded)
- Crispin Speers Travel Insurance (EE funded)
- Life Assurance Flex 10 x annual salary (EE funded)
Role overview
The main objective of the role is to profitably deal with costs on a caseload of settled personal injury cost claims. Main duties will include Cost Budgeting, drafting of Bills of Costs, Points in Replies, negotiating costs settlements and, where this cannot be achieved, preparing cases for Provisional or Detailed Assessment.
Duties of a Cost Draftsperson will include;
- Prepare and submit claims for costs for assessment and payment
- Drafting and management of a caseload of files, the nature and volume of the files will depend on the level of seniority, complexity and value.
- To liaise and advise case managers in relation to a variety of legal costs matters
- Ensure the workflows and processes are strictly adhered to.
- Provide technical advice and supervision to junior members of the team.
- Acting as mentor to junior members of the team.
- Report any cases that fall outside of the draftsperson’s individual authority to the Costs Team Manager.
- Manage files to make sure that all time spent is accurately recorded.
- Conducting negotiations and advising on costs issues raised
About you:
- Extensive experience working as a Costs Draftsperson handling your own caseload
- Experience of drafting and preparing documents to a high standard in terms of presentation and attention to detail is essential.
- Experience of drafting points of dispute, points of reply, costs budgets and bills of costs
- Experience of preparing detailed costs estimates and security for costs applications
- Excellent communication, organisation and research skills
- Adherence to guidelines and procedures
- Ability to work with minimal supervision
- A flexible approach to work
- Ability to work as a team and independently
- Costs Negotiations experience would be desirable
- Personal injury and/or clinical negligence experience would be highly advantageous
Why would you want to work with NewLaw?
NewLaw is a leading specialist law firm and is part of Redde Group Plc. NewLaw is ranked in the Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners for three areas; Personal Injury, Clinical Negligence and Private Client services. Our fresh approach to managing personal injury claims has made us a major force in the sector since we were first established in 2004. Our teams of specialists provide a service that 95% of our clients would recommend.