There is a severe climate change in civil litigation. Lord Justice Jackson is determined to implement the full package of reforms by 1 October 2012. This affects the scale and nature of the work law firms need to undertake on costs-related issues and their ability to compete profitably.

For some time yet, drafting bills of costs for detailed assessment (and everything that flows from that process) will continue to represent the bulk of our work. We do that work very well and at an extremely high level.

But we are convinced that the emphasis on costs budgeting and legal spend management — right now more a subject of theory than practice — will become exponentially more important over the next five years and beyond.

Hence the combined discipline of costs management has been our primary focus over the last two years. We are now ready to establish Practico as the partner of choice for law firms and in-house legal departments to support their growing engagement with costs management.