Re: Lawyers baked-bean protest over government plans for Tesco Law
- From: Richard Miller <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 19:21:59 +0100
In message <Zz0Pl.50922$TA6.8990@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Vernon <big_vernie@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
"Richard Miller" <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:R8GL2f4m5IDKFwr0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxIn message <d68a3e86-dc31-483f-a507-54f7c6036c27@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Webmanager_CritEst <webmanager@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
“Allowing the likes of Co-op, Tesco and the AA to provide legal services is a reciple for disaster and a move that demonstrates utter contempt for the consumer of legal services.
The main concern with people like this providing services is that they will cherry pick the more profitable work that currently underpins a general legal service to market towns up and down the country. As a result, many people may find they are worse served than before the market opened up.
Isn't this the case with things like the deregulation of the post, telecommunications etc. It is good initially but leads to long term problems.
I think that is very often true.
Although the legal profession could do more for themselves, ie reduce charges etc, or for example maybe move to a fixed fee basis for more things, ok some you would gain, some you would lose, but overall if people knew it was going to cost XX then they can make a judgement for themselves and proceed vs cost of XX or 2xXX or 3xXX which must put off a lot of business as people cannot afford the risk.
There is an argument that lawyers have effectively priced themselves out of the market.
In part, that is because they have to work with the complex justice system the Government has set up, and the complex rules of evidence etc, especially in the criminal field.
Another part of the problem is that the issue of "unbundling" has never been addressed. Solicitors find it difficult to do part only of a case, even if that is what the client wants, partly because of their own historic position but also in part because insurers and regulators won't let them escape liability for the part of the case the client has done. Therefore they can't afford to let the client do stuff - or at least they believe that to be the case. Given the litigious nature of society these days, it is no stretch to believe that a client might consult the solicitor on a statement and then sue because the solicitor did not correct problems in their self-drafted pleadings. Yet if they do try to correct things, they get accused of deliberately making work for themselves. I am sure rules could be devised to limit the solicitor's liability in order to allow them to deliver a more limited service at cheaper cost.
Fixed fees are another historically contentious issue, but there is movement here. Many firms are starting to use them, and the advice from law firm management consultants is that this must be the way of the future. The key to this is to be clear exactly what is within the fixed fee and what falls outside it. So much of a piece of contentious legal work depends on things outside the control of either the client or the lawyer that it is not possible to give guarantees, but it is more possible than lawyers have tended to accept to say that if the case goes according to normal routine (as defined), then it will cost X, no more, no less. But in turn, that means that clients will have to get used to not being able to phone up and speak to their lawyer six times a day, or to keep changing their mind about the instructions, or failing to make up their mind at all.
I am also sure that solicitors could do a lot more to use technology to improve services. However, here they run into data security problems. These are expensive to address, and most high street solicitors' firms do not have much spare capital floating around to make the necessary investment.
Whatever the reasons, we have a Government that is not prepared to continue paying current rates for legal aid lawyers (even though it will happily pay ten times as much for lawyers to advise the Government itself - I wonder what the hourly rate was for the fight to not disclose expenses?) - and a large number of ordinary people who cannot hope to afford the rates. Something somehow needs to be done about this.
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Richard Miller
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- References:
- Lawyers’ baked-bean protest over government plans for ‘Tesco Law’
- From: Webmanager_CritEst
- Re: Lawyers baked-bean protest over government plans for Tesco Law
- From: Vernon
- Lawyers’ baked-bean protest over government plans for ‘Tesco Law’
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