Cost calculator

What does discussing the evidence cost?

Choose a starting point, then adjust the matter, the team, the rates and the time to match your own. The calculator prices the professional time your team spends discussing the evidence, finding earlier replies, meeting, reading and bundling, and shows how much of that time a shared, searchable record of the discussion might free.

The adjudication starting point is the model behind the figure in the collaboration section of our home page: 120 rounds of discussion at 40 minutes a round, which cost £18,318.60. Every rate and reduction is labelled with its basis, and the time estimates are tested against published studies as you change them. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

Published an official, surveyed or court figure, or one derived from published data
Company or vendor reported by a company, or by a study a vendor commissioned
VeriCase assumption an estimate by VeriCase that you can change
Your figure a figure you have entered

Prefer to start from each person’s hours on the matter? Use the evidence cost calculator.

The matter

Each starting point is a VeriCase estimate, built from the same minutes and hours for each person. Change any figure to match your matter.

AdjudicationLarge adjudicationCourt claimArbitration

Seven people over about six weeks: 40 items, each discussed three times (120 rounds), two bundles, one conference with counsel, one experts’ meeting and three progress calls. Discussion takes 40 minutes a round, as in the model on our home page.

Items of evidence discussed40

Emails, notices, records, drawings and reports that the team has to read and discuss.

Times each item is discussed3 times

Each time is a round of replies before the point is settled.

Bundles prepared2 bundles

Submission or hearing bundles, each indexed and paginated.

Length of the matter6 weeks

Used only to test the time estimates against weekly benchmarks; the cost does not depend on it.

Number of matters1

For a series of adjudications on one project. No credit is taken for reusing earlier discussion.

Forum

Rates

Choose the source of the solicitors’ rates. Counsel’s and the experts’ rates can be chosen from published figures or typed over in the team table.

Solicitors’ rates

King’s Counsel

Junior counsel

Technical experts: one expert for each discipline ticked

Fire engineering

Architecture

Building services (mechanical and electrical)

3 experts at an average of £253.73 an hour. Each expert’s time is set in the team table.

The team and their time

Discussing and finding are minutes for each person each time an item is discussed. Reading is minutes for each person for each item over the whole matter. Bundling is hours for each person for each bundle. Untick anyone who is not involved.

Person	Rate, £ an hour	Discussing, minutes each time	Finding earlier replies, minutes each time	Reading, minutes an item	Bundling, hours a bundle
Counsel
King’s CounselAssumption
Junior counselPanel rate
Solicitors
PartnerGuideline rate
Senior associateGuideline rate
AssociateGuideline rate
ParalegalGuideline rate
Experts
Technical experts (3)Survey	£253.73
Quantum expertSurvey
Delay expertSurvey
Client team
Commercial managerDerived
Project managerAssumption
DirectorAssumption

What a shared record might change

The share of each activity’s time that a shared, searchable record of the discussion might free, in a low, central and high case. The figure that might be freed uses the central case.

Central case: published research only

Leaves out of the central case the reductions that no study measures (reading and bundling) and the company and vendor figures for meetings. Untick it to include them.

Meeting reduction, central case

Value placed on the time freed

Activity	Low, %	Central, %	High, %	Basis of the central case
Discussing the evidence				Published McKinsey Global Institute, July 2012 (25% to 30%)
Finding earlier replies				Published McKinsey Global Institute, July 2012 (30% to 35%)
Meetings				None counted: no independent study measures it
Reading and rereading				None counted in the central case: no study measures this
Bundling				None counted in the central case: no study measures this

Professional time on the evidence, one matter

£78,002

313 hours, about 42 working days

Discussing the evidence comes to £18,319: the figure modelled in the collaboration section of our home page.

Time a shared record might free, central case

£6,486

27.2 hours, 8.3% of the cost above. Low case £4,019; high case £14,055.

An illustration, not a measured result. It applies published research on shared, searchable discussion, made for knowledge workers generally, to the figures above; VeriCase has not measured how much time it saves. Whether time freed becomes a saving depends on how the time is billed and used.

How firm is this figure?

Time that might be freed in the central case, by the basis of its reduction

Cost of the time, by the basis of its rate

£6,486 of the central figure rests on published research. The minutes, hours and meeting patterns are estimates in every case: VeriCase’s in the starting points, or yours. The checks below test them.

Do the time estimates hold up?

Each check takes the busiest person on the team and compares their time on one activity with a published study, averaged over the length of the matter.

Finding earlier repliesBelow the benchmark
Busiest: Junior counsel, 0.7 hours a week finding earlier replies over 6 weeks.
599 construction leaders reported spending 5.5 hours a week, 13.4% of their working time, looking for project data and information of all kinds (PlanGrid with FMI, 2018).
Discussing the evidenceBelow the benchmark
Busiest: Associate, 4.0 hours a week discussing the evidence over 6 weeks.
Knowledge workers spend about 28% of the working week, 13 hours of a week of 46.5 hours, reading and answering email of all kinds (McKinsey Global Institute, 2012).
MeetingsBelow the benchmark
Busiest: Associate, 1.1 hours a week in meetings over 6 weeks.
632 employees reported an average of 18 hours a week in meetings of all kinds (Rogelberg with Otter.ai, 2022; self-reported, and published by the vendor).
All evidence workWithin a working week
Busiest: Associate, 12.4 hours a week on evidence work over 6 weeks.
A full working week of five days of 7.5 hours, the basis of the timesheet.
BundlingBelow the benchmark
25.0 hours of team time for each bundle.
The High Court held it plainly unreasonable to spend 55, 82 or 85 hours assembling the six bundles for each of three hearings, and allowed 50 hours of work on the documents for each of two hearings (Hon Shu Pang v Justin Zinda [2024] EWHC 176 (KB), paragraphs 17 and 21; the costs of a litigant in person).
Length of an adjudicationFor context
Your matter runs for 6 weeks, about 42 days.
48% of respondents said that adjudications in the past year were typically completed within 29 to 42 days of the referral notice (King’s College London with the Adjudication Society, Construction Adjudication in the United Kingdom, November 2024). Your length may include work before the referral.

The timesheet

One square is one working day of 7.5 hours, five to a row.42 days

Where the time goes

Activity	Hours	Cost	Central	Might be freed
Discussing	80	£18,319	25%	£4,580
Finding	24	£6,356	30%	£1,907
Meetings	27	£7,262	0%	£0
Reading	132	£34,067	0%	£0
Bundling	50	£11,998	0%	£0
Total	313	£78,002	8.3%	£6,486

Who spends it

Person	Rate	Hours	A week	Cost	Might be freed
Junior counsel	£150	48	8.0	£7,200	£555
Partner	£579	29	4.8	£16,791	£1,563
Associate	£305	74.5	12.4	£22,723	£2,196
Paralegal	£210	40	6.7	£8,400	£0
Quantum expert	£253.73	41.5	6.9	£10,530	£939
Delay expert	£253.73	41.5	6.9	£10,530	£939
Commercial manager	£47.50	38.5	6.4	£1,829	£295
Total		313		£78,002	£6,486

A week is each person’s hours on one matter, averaged over its length.

Low, central and high

The value that might be freed in each case, by activity. The spread shows where the uncertainty lies.

Activity	Low	Central	High
Discussing	£2,748	£4,580	£5,496
Finding	£1,271	£1,907	£2,225
Meetings	£0	£0	£528
Reading	£0	£0	£3,407
Bundling	£0	£0	£2,400
Total	£4,019	£6,486	£14,055
Hours freed	16.8	27.2	57.3
Share of cost	5.2%	8.3%	18%

In statutory adjudication each party usually bears its own legal and expert costs, so the cost of this time is not usually recoverable from the other party.

How the estimate is built

Discussing: items, times the number of times each is discussed, times each person’s minutes, divided by 60.
Finding earlier replies: the same, using each person’s finding minutes.
Reading: items, times each person’s reading minutes for each item, divided by 60.
Bundling: bundles, times each person’s hours for each bundle.
Meetings: the number, times the hours each, times the people attending.
Each person’s hours are priced at their rate. Technical experts count once for each discipline ticked, each at their own rate.
Time freed is each activity’s hours multiplied by its reduction. Meeting reductions apply only to the kinds of meeting marked replaceable.
The value of the time freed is that time priced at the same rates, multiplied by the share of it you choose to count.
The checks divide each person’s hours on one matter by its length in weeks. More than one matter multiplies one matter by the number of matters.

Notes and sources

Discussing and finding earlier replies: McKinsey Global Institute, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, July 2012 (Exhibit 20), estimated that social technologies could free 25% to 30% of the time that interaction workers (high-skill knowledge workers) spend reading and answering email, and 30% to 35% of the time they spend searching for and gathering information. The central case uses the lower figures; the low cases (15% and 20%) are VeriCase discounts. These are modelled estimates for knowledge workers generally, drawn from data of 2009, not measured results in construction or law, and they predate VeriCase.
Meetings: no independent study measures how much meeting time a shared record of the discussion removes, so the central case counts none. The optional figures are a 14% fall in the average time each person spent in meetings at Shopify in the first five months of 2023, compared with the same months of 2022, which followed a policy of cancelling recurring meetings rather than a software tool (its chief financial officer, interviewed in Fortune, 14 July 2023); and an 18.9% average fall in the number of meetings in a study commissioned by Microsoft (Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Teams, April 2019).
Reading and bundling: VeriCase assumptions (5% and 10% in the central case when assumptions are included); no study measures them. For context, the review of documents typically accounted for about 73% of the cost of producing electronic disclosure in 57 productions studied by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice (Where the Money Goes, 2012); and in White Winston Select Asset Funds LLC v Mahon [2019] EWHC 1381 (Ch), some 200 to 250 of the more than 8,000 pages in the chronological files were referred to at trial (paragraph 43).
Value placed on time freed: studies of workplace software commonly count only part of the time saved as value. Forrester’s study of Thomson Reuters legal research tools for an in-house legal department (November 2024) counted 80%; its study of Microsoft Teams (April 2019) counted 25%. Both were commissioned by the vendor.
Solicitors’ rates: HMCTS solicitors’ guideline hourly rates in effect from 01 January 2026, by band and grade (A partner, B senior associate, C associate, D trainee or paralegal). The courts use guideline rates as a starting point for the summary assessment of costs; actual charges may be higher. The option of rates claimed in a Technology and Construction Court case uses the hourly rates claimed by the claimant’s solicitors in Lime Technology Ltd v Liverpool City Council [2025] EWHC 2037 (TCC), a procurement claim (partner £1,345.50, senior associate £895.50, associate £463.50), which the judge described as “at the upper range of any possible range” (paragraph 14); no paralegal rate was recorded, so the London 1 Grade D rate is used.
Counsel: there is no official guideline hourly rate for barristers. Junior counsel’s £150 is the Attorney General’s London A Panel rate for government civil work from 01 April 2025, a discounted public-sector rate. £175 and £350 are the lowest and highest of the minimum hourly rates, before value added tax, that Crown Office Chambers publishes for public access work in cases valued under £100,000, depending on the barrister’s seniority (checked 06 October 2026). King’s Counsel at £600 is a VeriCase assumption, with £1,000 as an upper sensitivity; £270 is the Attorney General’s rate from 01 April 2025 for a King’s Counsel of ten years or more whose current rate is £200 to £269, a public-sector floor. Published judgments generally record counsel’s brief fees rather than hourly rates.
Experts: £253.73 is the average hourly rate for report writing reported by expert witnesses working in the civil courts, across all disciplines, in the Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey 2025 (published 07 November 2025; 525 respondents). No current survey reports rates by discipline; replace it with the rates your experts quote.
Client team: the commercial manager’s £47.50 is an estimate of the internal cost to the contractor, derived from a gross salary of £57,000 with employer National Insurance, the statutory minimum employer pension contribution and a 25% overhead, over 1,740 working hours a year. The project manager’s £45 and the director’s £85 are VeriCase assumptions.
Benchmarks for the checks: PlanGrid with FMI, Construction Disconnected, 2018 (599 construction industry leaders; 5.5 hours a week looking for project data and information); McKinsey Global Institute, July 2012 (28% of the working week on email); Rogelberg with Otter.ai, The Cost of Unnecessary Meeting Attendance, 2022 (632 employees; 18 hours a week in meetings); Hon Shu Pang v Justin Zinda [2024] EWHC 176 (KB), paragraphs 17 and 21; Nazzini and Godhe, King’s College London with the Adjudication Society, Construction Adjudication in the United Kingdom, November 2024. Each benchmark covers more than work on the evidence, so the estimates should sit below it.
Starting points: team sizes, minutes, hours and meeting patterns are VeriCase estimates based on practitioner experience, chosen as lower bounds. The same times for each person are used in every starting point of a calculator, so a larger matter costs more only because it has more items, discussions, bundles, meetings or people.
Recovery of costs: in statutory adjudication each party usually bears its own legal and expert costs. In litigation and arbitration some costs may be recoverable from, or payable to, the other party.
The figures show professional time and its cost at the rates shown, and the time that might be freed in each case. They are illustrations: VeriCase has not measured the time it saves, and whether time freed becomes a saving depends on how the time is billed and used.