Morrison-Hughes: Ensuring every client is truly informed
A leading costs lawyer has launched a tech platform to help ensure that clients “genuinely understand” and consent to the costs involved in their cases.
Victoria Morrison-Hughes, founder of The Legal Lexi, said solicitors “don’t think they have a problem” with explaining costs clearly but “everyone in my industry knows they do”.
Whether clients gave informed consent to deductions from their damages has been a particularly hot topic in costs disputes over recent years.
Ms Morrison-Hughes, director of Integral Legal Costs, said The Legal Lexi was aimed at law firms of all sizes and all areas of law, its purpose being to ensure that “every client is truly informed, not just on paper but in practice – and that every law firm has the tools to demonstrate ethical communication and compliance”.
The platform translates complex legal and costs information into plain English, supported by optional audio explanations, and clients are asked short questions, enabling firms to “evidence genuine understanding”.
Ms Morrison-Hughes, vice-chair of the Association of Costs Lawyers, said the idea behind the platform had been “in the melting pot” for a few years as she built up Integral, which is based in Wilmslow, Cheshire, and has eight staff.
Solicitors were “navigating an increasingly complex landscape – regulatory expectations, consumer law, vulnerability guidance, complaints risk – all while trying to deliver good legal outcomes for their clients”, she explained.
The Legal Lexi could help solicitors comply with the Legal Ombudsman’s requirements that clients were “fully informed” about costs and costs information was available “in one place”, which in this case would be the platform’s dashboard.
Sally Dunscombe, a director at Annecto Legal and well-known figure in the legal and insurance world, is Ms Morrison-Hughes’s co-founder.
Solicitor and entrepreneur Sucheet Amin, senior partner of personal injury firm Aequitas Legal in Manchester, has joined as an investor and non-executive director following his exit from inCase, which he created and sold to the Access Group in 2024.
Ms Morrison-Hughes said law firms were charged a monthly fee according to the number of clients using the platform, and the aim for this year was for two law firms to join every month.
“The Legal Lexi will support solicitors and clients at all the key costs touch points throughout the case, such as budgets, estimates and invoices,” she added.
Ms Morrison-Hughes said the “inspiration” for launching the platform was her experience over 30 years of legal costs, and she has taken a particular interest in helping vulnerable clients faced with costs demands they were not expecting.
She added that her father, brother and eldest son were all dyslexic, and the system had been successfully tested by a dyslexic client.
“Dyslexics tend to be completely trusting and sign documents without reading them because they are overwhelmed by the amount of information and it scares them.”
She said that because The Legal Lexi explained things in plain English in “bite-sized chunks” and used audio, the dyslexic customer could follow everything and, at the end of the experience, asked why “everything is not like this”.
Mr Amin added: “What stood out to me about The Legal Lexi was that it recognises the real-world pressures solicitors face.
“Transparency and client understanding are now central to regulatory and consumer expectations, but firms need practical tools that work in day-to-day practice.
“The platform has the potential to materially reduce disputes and complaints, while supporting solicitors in doing the right thing with confidence.”
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