Part 1 General Report -- Cost and Fee Allocation in Civil Procedure - A Comparative Study; Mathias Reimann -- Part 2 National Reports -- Australia; Camille Cameron -- Austria; Marianna Roth -- Belgium; Ilse Samoy & Vincent Sagaert -- Brazil Alexandre Alcino de Barros and Sílvia Julio Bueno de Miranda -- Canada; Patrick Glenn.- Czech Republik; Jan Hurdík -- England and Wales; Richard Moorhead -- Finland; Jarkko Männistö -- France; Nicolas Cayrol -- Germany; Burkhard Hess and Rudolf Huebner -- Greece; Kalliopi Makridou -- India; Neela Badami -- Israel; Talia Fisher and Rosen Zvi† -- Italy; Alessandra de Luca -- Japan; Manabu Wagatsuma -- Korea; Gyooho Lee -- Macau; Cândida da Silva Antunes Pires -- Netherlands; Marco Loos -- Russia; Alena Zaytseva -- Scotland; Greg Gordon -- Slovenia; Nina Betetto -- Spain; Francisco Lopez Símo and José Ángel Torres-Lana -- Sweden; Martin Sunnqvist -- Switzerland; Caspar Zellweger -- United States; James Maxeiner --  Author biographies -- Index.

The volume describes and analyzes how the costs of litigation in civil procedure are distributed in key countries around the world. It compares the various approaches, draws general conclusions from that comparison, and presents global trends as well as common problems and solutions. In particular, the book deals with three principal questions: First, who pays for civil litigation costs, i.e., to what extent do losers have to make winners whole? Second, how much money is at stake, i.e., how expensive is civil litigation in the respective jurisdictions? And third, whose money is ultimately spent, i.e., how are civil litigation costs distributed through mechanisms like legal aid, litigation insurance, collective actions, and success oriented fees? Inter alia, the study reveals a general trend towards deregulation of lawyer fees as well as a substantial correlation between the burden of litigation costs and membership of a jurisdiction in the civil and common law families.  This study is the result of the XVIIIth World Congress of Comparative Law held under the auspices of the International Academy of Comparative Law.