If 200 people in England and Wales dropped dead one week from a mysterious unknown cause, you’d think our supposedly nanny state would learn about it right away.
Here’s the problem, there’s a nagging uncertainty about ‘high street’ solicitors' firms. There is a lot going on but you haven’t quite seen a specific challenge or threat to your firm. Whatever the threats are, you can’t quite clarify the problem in terms of how you run your firm because there’s not enough hard evidence to base business management decisions on. Your firm is busy, you’re profitable and the client enquiries are coming in to keep the firm going. You, your partners, fee earners and staff work hard to deliver a high-quality service to your clients.
This week, from the same people who brought you economic ruin, we have more of the same. As I have said before, deregulation and liberalisation - those twin modern marvels which most agree to have been the motors of our current economic crisis - are still fixed in our rulers’ heads, as if everything will come right if we just keep on taking larger doses of the same medicine.
Darren Isaacs is wrong to say there has been a marked increase in the past six months in the level of bills we are rejecting. The level of rejects has remained relatively constant.
Lord Justice Jackson’s suggestion of a fixed-cost regime is an improvement on the government’s proposals, but falls short of providing ‘copper-bottomed’ compliance with the Aarhus Convention.
