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Here is a small horror story most litigators know by heart. The file settles, the client is happy, and then you sit down to draft your bill of costs and realize you never logged the courier that carried the affidavit to the registry, the twelve dollars for a certified copy, or the process server who tried three times before catching the respondent at home. None of it is huge on its own. Together, over a two-year file, it is real money you paid out of the firm's account and will never see again.
Disbursements leak. They leak because they arrive in dribs and drabs, from a dozen different places, often on someone else's desk. The fix is not a better memory. It is a checklist you keep open from the day the file opens, so the money gets caught the moment it goes out the door. Here is the one I use.
Filing and Court Fees You Forget to Log
Court and registry fees feel automatic, which is exactly why they slip. You pay them, the matter moves forward, and the receipt gets lost. Log every one of these the day it happens:
- Filing fees for the claim, defence, applications, and motions.
- Fees for issuing and renewing, which people forget on files that drag past a year.
- Certified or true copies from the registry.
- Search fees: title searches, corporate searches, PPSA, bankruptcy, and litigation searches.
- Hearing and set-down fees, and any fee to reserve trial dates.
- Transcript ordering fees, which are separate from the per-page transcript cost.
Tip. Scan the receipt to the file at the moment you pay. A logged amount with no backup is the first thing an assessment officer questions, and reconstructing it eighteen months later is miserable.
Expert and Report Costs Worth Flagging Early
This is where the big numbers live, and where a surprise at the end of a file damages the client relationship. Expert costs are rarely a single invoice. They come in layers, and each layer is recoverable only if the client understood it was coming.
- Retainer paid to the expert before any work begins.
- File review time, separate from the report itself.
- The written report, plus any supplementary or responding report.
- Preparation time for discovery or trial testimony.
- Attendance and cancellation fees, which can be brutal if a date moves.
- Medical records, imaging, and clinical notes ordered to support the opinion.
Flag the expected total in writing when you retain the expert, and update the client if it grows. An expert bill nobody warned the client about becomes an argument about your bill, not the expert's.
Process Servers, Couriers, and the Small Stuff
Individually trivial. Collectively, the category that leaks the most, because it is handled by whoever happens to be free that afternoon.
| Category | Easy to miss because |
|---|---|
| Process serving | Multiple attempts get billed as one line, or not at all |
| Couriers and registered mail | Paid at the counter, receipt lost the same day |
| Photocopying and printing | Nobody counts pages until the bill of costs |
| Binding and tabs for briefs | Treated as overhead when it is a real disbursement |
| Online research and database charges | Billed monthly to the firm, never allocated to a file |
| Mileage and parking for attendances | Claimed from memory, or forgotten entirely |
The rule for this category is boring and it works: no reimbursement to staff without a receipt attached to a file number. If the expense cannot find a file, it does not get paid. That single policy converts a pile of anonymous petty cash slips into recoverable disbursements.
Recording Disbursements as You Go, Not at Trial
Every leak above shares one root cause. The cost is recorded long after it was incurred, if at all. Reconstruction at the end of a file is guesswork, and guesswork does not survive assessment.
A disbursement you log the day you pay it is a disbursement you recover. Everything else is a hope. A working litigator's rule of thumb
Make the recording live in the same place as the rest of the matter, so nobody has to remember a separate step. When your litigation timeline and your cost ledger sit on the same file, the person filing the motion is the person who logs its fee. A practice management tool like A1 CMS keeps disbursements attached to the matter as they happen, which is the whole game. A few habits carry most of the weight:
- One file, one running list, updated the day money moves.
- A receipt or backup for every line, no exceptions.
- A monthly review to catch the recurring charges (research subscriptions, storage) that never announce themselves.
- A pre-trial reconciliation so the bill of costs is a straightforward printout, not a reconstruction exercise.
Note. Taxable versus non-taxable status varies by court and tariff. Log everything anyway. It is far easier to remove a line at assessment than to resurrect one you never captured.
What Gets Left on the Table at Assessment
When a file goes to assessment or the costs are taxed, the disbursements that survive are the ones with a clean paper trail and a clear connection to the litigation. The ones that quietly die tend to be the same every time:
- Amounts with no receipt, disallowed on principle.
- Charges the officer cannot tie to a step in the proceeding.
- Overhead dressed up as a disbursement, like general office supplies.
- Duplicate or vague entries that invite the officer to cut them.
- Small recurring costs that were never allocated to the file in the first place.
The pattern is obvious once you see it. What gets recovered is what got recorded properly and promptly. What gets left on the table is what someone meant to write down later.
So keep the list open from day one, attach a receipt to every line, and reconcile before you draft the bill, not after the trial ends. Do that, and the disbursements stop being a loss you absorb and become a number you can defend. If you want the wider picture of how these costs sit inside a civil file, our Family and Civil Practice posts and the knowledge base pick up where this checklist leaves off.
