In the legal sector, it seems that second only to a sprinkling of Latin is our affection for a good acronym. Witness the panellists on our recent ATE roundtable discussing CMCs, CCMCs, AvMA, APIL and SCIL.
But north of the border, Scottish lawyers have been largely denied use of one of the profession’s younger and more esoteric abbreviations, QOCS.
I don’t know if Lord Justice Jackson was the very first to put the concept of Qualified One-way Costs Shifting down on paper, but his Review of Civil Litigation Costs certainly did more than any other publication to bring QOCS into popular legal parlance and, of course, into law.
The specific law in question, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, quickly became known as LASPO, of course, which has the dual distinction of being both an acronym and sounding like it might be Latin (Laspo, Laspas, Laspat…).
However, LASPO’s fundamental transformation of personal injury litigation only extended to England and Wales, leaving Scotland QOCSless, until now.
In fact, it is more than 3 years since the Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018 introduced QOCS to the Scottish Legal System, but it was only in March this year that the commencement legislation was laid before the Scottish Parliament and June that the necessary Act of Sederunt approved the draft rules submitted by the Scottish Civil Justice Council.
QOCS then applied to personal injury cases in Scotland for actions brought after June 30.
Needless to say, ARAG did not wait for the new legislation to come into force to make sure that our partner firms in Scotland were properly equipped to look after their clients under the new regime.
We has already developed a new policy for Scottish clients that enabled a seamless shift to accommodate the new rules, which was reassuring for both our partner firms and their clients, and minimised disruption for all.
If you would like to no more about our after-the-event policies specifically designed for firms acting in Scotland, then please get in touch.
Disclaimer - all information in this article was correct at time of publishing.
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