How can I challenge the costs as excessive?

Question

José Manuel Alburquerque · Accepted Answer

What is challenged is the assessment of costs, the calculation of what you have to pay, which is carried out by the court clerk (“letrado de la Administración de Justicia”), the official who runs the court office. You have ten working days from when you are notified of it. In the written challenge you must identify one by one the bills of fees and the items you dispute and explain why. Otherwise, it will not be admitted. If you dispute the other side's lawyer's fees as excessive, that lawyer is heard and, if they do not agree to reduce them, the Bar Association (“colegio de la abogacía”) issues a report, which is not binding on the court. What can be disputed The law distinguishes two kinds of challenge, which can be raised at the same time: On the grounds of undue items, which are those that should not appear in the calculation. For example, fees for pleadings that are unnecessary or not authorised by law, items that are not broken down, work that was not done in that case or amounts that exceed the cap of one third of the value of the case when no recklessness (“temeridad”) has been declared. It also covers the fees of the court agent (“procurador”) that do not comply with their scale of fees. On the grounds of excessive fees. This is only possible against the fees of the lawyer, the experts and the other professionals who have no official scale of fees. It is also worth checking that VAT has not been added in when calculating the cap and that the fees of a lawyer or court agent who was not compulsory have not been included, except in the cases where the law allows it. How the challenge is handled If you challenge the lawyer's fees as excessive, the court gives that lawyer five days to say whether they accept the reduction. If they do not accept it, the court asks the Bar Association for a report. With experts, the report is requested from the professional association or body to which they belong. If you challenge undue items, the other side is given three days to respond. The court clerk then decides by decree (“decreto”) whether to uphold the assessment or change it. That decree can be challenged by an application for review, which is decided by the judge. The Bar Associations may only have guideline fee criteria for assessing costs and for the “jura de cuentas”, which is a lawyer's claim against their own client. The law prohibits them from setting fee scales for any other purpose. Neither those criteria nor the Bar Association's report is binding on the court clerk or the judge. If your challenge is rejected entirely, you will only pay the costs of that ancillary procedure if the court finds that you have abused the public justice service. If you proposed an agreement before going to court In cases started on or after 3 April 2025 there is another route, which is requested within the same ten days. A party ordered to pay costs can ask to be released from paying them or for them to be reduced if these conditions are met: That, in an appropriate dispute resolution method (“MASC”), such as negotiation or mediation, they made the other side a proposal that the other side did not accept. That the judgment ending the case substantially matches what they proposed. That they enclose all the documentation of the proposal, which for these purposes ceases to be confidential. If they do not provide it, the request is not admitted. The same applies if the other side rejected without justification the proposal of a mediator or other neutral third party and the judgment substantially matches it. If the other side does not agree, the judge decides.