Keith Bintley Limited

The firm’s two directors have nearly 60 years of legal costs experience between them. They have both been senior directors at larger firms, Keith was training director for 10 years and John acted as head of adverse claims and insurance litigation. As a result, they have extensive experience of the intricacies of legal costs and have worked with most of the senior costs counsel in this sphere.

The firm predominantly works with highly regarded London based solicitors, together with leading firms from provincial cities. The majority of our work is centred in London and almost all our hearings take place at the Senior Courts Costs Office. The firm does not undertake legal aid or criminal costs work.

Keith Bintley Limited (“KBL”) has a particular focus on commercial work, insurance cases, catastrophic injuries, matrimonial costs claims and contentious trusts and probate costs. Both Keith and John are regularly in court as advocates in support of or opposing costs counsel. As costs lawyers they are also asked by clients to go on the court record.   Some firms of solicitors have in-house departments but instruct KBL to deal with their large and/or complex cases.  This year for example, one large firm with an in house costs department asked KBL to deal with two large Privy Council cases which had been listed for hearings.

The firm works equally for receiving and paying parties.  Although KBL does not deal with volume insurance work, the insurance cases undertaken frequently involve novel or complex arguments requiring specialist expertise.

Although as a firm KBL’s costs lawyers rarely undertake advocacy outside of the Senor Courts Costs Office, they have to understand the nuances of complex litigation either to prepare budgets or to defend bills. Advice is also provided to clients arising from international costs disputes, including work in the last 12 months relating to litigation in the Bahamas and Gibraltar.

The firm directly employs fee earners, all of whom have at least 15 years’ experience in legal costs and work is dealt with in-house to ensure that levels of quality and service are maintained. For the year ended 31 August 2023 the turnover had increased by 29% from the previous year and January 2024 recorded the highest turnover to date, up on the previous best month by 19.9%.

KBL spends very little on advertising but relies instead on word-of-mouth recommendations and repeat business.  In 2023 we recruited another senior costs lawyer to keep pace with increasing demand for the company’s services.

KBL continues to develop its tailored case management system for effective operation within the legal costs industry. This process has helped to ensure that case information is properly recorded and enables multiple costs lawyers to work on any one matter thereby providing continuity for clients and availability of data at any given time. The software also facilitates the negotiation of legal costs cases.  All work undertaken is also linked through Office 360 and specialist software is used for the preparation of bills and budgets to enable larger cases to be worked on by multiple practitioners overseen by a director.

The firm places a high value on staff training and underwrites the costs of training and professional development, including in-person external  training as this is deemed to be a richer form of learning and provides useful incidental conversations with fellow costs professionals, barristers and even costs judges.  Both John and Keith are members of the Association of Costs Lawyers as well as the Costs Lawyer’s Standard Board.