It started with a shunt on my friend’s car earlier this year. Eight months later, it finished with her £900 better off, utterly baffled with what had happened and convinced there was something rotten with the legal profession. 

What happened in those eight months was that entirely self-interested parties shunted her around far more than the at-fault driver had done that rainy February morning. 

The saddest thing is this is only likely to get worse.

My friend was a passenger in a car that was hit by another vehicle, with a temporarily absent-minded driver. It was his fault, they swapped details, and she duly informed her insurance company. Two weeks later she was told she had been offered £1,000 as compensation for her injuries by the at-fault driver’s insurer. Injuries that were unknown to anyone but her, and had yet to be diagnosed. My friend had no idea what this payment was for, let alone how what she should do. 

Then came the call from a law firm which would be acting in her claim – a claim, of course, she had yet to initiate. This firm advised her she should reject the offer, as accounting for its deductions she would be in line to receive only £750 anyway. This firm, it transpired, was a joint venture between a claimant practice and her insurer under an alternative business structure. 

There was no explanation how her details were passed on, or what the firm would be doing to justify its £250 take-away, and no mention that she could always find another legal adviser. Still no-one knew if she had been injured, let alone what the injuries were. 

Spurred on by these gung-ho lawyers, she rejected the offer. Now there would be a medical, a 10-minute appointment with a doctor to establish her injuries, which by this time had long since worn off. 

It was a clinical process in every way. The doctor barely looked at her, never mind examined her. He asked how long symptoms had remained: ‘Three weeks’, was the reply. ‘Shall we say five?’ was the doctor’s response. On several occasions he tried – unsuccessfully – to persuade her to inflate the nature of her injuries.  

The weeks and months passed, with no update. Then news: the insurance company wanted to settle the claim there and then, with no further action. Her lawyers (who were, confusingly, wedded to an insurance company of their own) said she could take it, but they wouldn’t get their costs. Instead, would she mind allowing them to issue the claim? It would only add a few weeks after all. 

Confused and cajoled, she agreed. The claim went cold again, before suddenly a letter confirmed she would receive £950, after deductions. It was over, but she had no idea how she’d got there.  

I share this experience not because it’s particularly noteworthy. And this is not to deny that lawyers running her claim did their best for their client, nor to tar the entire sector with the same brush. 

But the unsavoury elements – the passing on of details, the nefarious-looking (albeit lawful) links between insurer and law firm, the going-through-motions doctor – give the industry a bad name. And we’re doing nothing about them.

This year the Civil Liability Bill will get royal assent, reducing damages and effectively pricing legitimate PI lawyers out of the market, leaving it to the CMSs and insurance firms. The legislation does nothing about cold callers, insurers running their own law firms, or doctors talking up claims. If injured people already feel alienated by the claims process, they will have no chance in the wild west system we’re about to create.