A contribution, not a reimbursement

How we work

Why the arithmetic comes before the advice

When proceedings end in Belgium, the unsuccessful party is ordered to pay the successful party a procedural indemnity: a lump-sum contribution towards that party's lawyer's fees and costs. The amounts are fixed by royal decree by reference to the value of the dispute, with a basic amount and a minimum and maximum, and a court may depart from the basic figure within that range on a reasoned application. The word that does the work is contribution. It is not a reimbursement, it is not calculated from what was actually spent, and it commonly falls well short of it. Succeeding in proceedings and still being materially out of pocket is therefore an ordinary outcome of the system working as designed, rather than a sign that something went wrong.

Running the same figure in the other direction produces the number that ought to govern the decision to litigate at all. A party that does not succeed pays its own lawyer and, ordinarily, the other side's procedural indemnity as well. That combined exposure is what a client is really deciding about when they decide whether to issue proceedings, and it is the figure least often placed in front of them beforehand. A decision taken without it is not a decision; it is an assumption that winning is likely and that winning solves the cost question, and neither of those is safe.

Two further questions belong at the beginning rather than at the point where a bill has become uncomfortable. The first is legal aid: second-line legal aid exists for those who meet the conditions, and a lawyer should raise it at the outset rather than wait to be asked. The second is insurance. People hold legal expenses policies they have forgotten about and find themselves paying privately for exactly the dispute the policy was bought to cover. And where such a policy does apply, the insured has the free choice of lawyer; the insurer cannot impose one. Alongside all of this sit the rules that shape how a practice may present itself at all: no success rates, no comparisons, no testimonials, no promised outcomes, and no fee consisting solely of a share of what a case produces. Those are not modesty. They are the conditions of practising.