“Costs Lawyers are a vital profession for ensuring proper accountability of lawyers,” says one-time deputy costs master
The ACL has made Dr Victoria McCloud, who retired from the High Court bench earlier this year, an honorary member.
She is already sitting on a working party the ACL set up last month – at the suggestion of the Senior Courts Costs Office (SCCO) – to review Precedent G (which details points of dispute on a bill of costs and any replies). It is looking at how effective the precedent is when completing assessments of costs, particularly where electronic bills are used.
She will attend next month’s ACL London Conference as part of this.
Dr McCloud was a King’s Bench master when she retired in the summer after a judicial career lasting nearly two decades. In her time, she presided over cases including defamation claims against Donald Trump, the ‘revenge porn’ case of Georgia Harrison v Stephen Bear, parts of the ‘Plebgate’ litigation, Nadim Zahawi MP’s suit against an Iranian publication, and cases on asbestos and open justice.
As counsel, she won the early Thai Trading case on the lawfulness of contingency fee agreements in the 1990s at the start of her career, and latterly served two periods as a deputy costs judge at the SCCO. She is now a panel mediator at costs mediation service CADR, a consultant at W-Legal solicitors and an Associate member of Gatehouse Chambers, London.
ACL chair Jack Ridgway said: “Victoria has made a significant contribution to the costs world in her rulings, her commitment to ADR and her steadfast support for Costs Lawyers, recognising the value of our qualification and regulation. Making her an honorary member of the Association reflects the profession’s great appreciation for what she has done to date and we are confident that she will continue to play an influential role in shaping the development of costs law and practice into the future.”
Dr McCloud said: “I am absolutely delighted and honoured to have been invited by the ACL to be an honorary member. My whole professional career one way or another has kept returning to costs, whether at the Bar or as a judge, or socially with cost judge and costs lawyer friends and colleagues or, as I do now, in costs mediation.
“I remain and always will be a firm believer that Costs Lawyers are a vital profession for ensuring proper accountability of lawyers to their clients and of parties to one another, and to have received this recognition is genuinely a great pleasure. I intend to continue to support the work of the ACL as it continues to grow and flourish and look forward to the future.”