Caution pays

I was concerned to read the article by Robert Bolt ([2000] Gazette 6 July, 14) and the letter in reply (see [2000] Gazette 13 July, 16).This whole area needs considerable thought before we rush headlong into allowing referral fees in personal injury cases.

The massive growth in what Mr Bolt describes as 'claim farmers' has arisen precisely because solicitors have been prepared to pay a referral fee, dressed up as an administration fee, and the 'commercial reality' which we are faced with is a creature of a short-sighted solicitors' profession's own making.The removal of the bar on the payment of referral fees (the legalisation of what is currently effectively decriminalised) would have the effect of dramatically increasing the number of claims companies.

That is, dare I say it, on the assumption that individuals would not be entitled to sell us their own cases, for the going rate.I consider that this whole process would inevitably have a detrimental effect on the quality of service which is offered to claimants.

Claims companies take no professional risk and get paid large sums of money for cases.

There is often a contingency fee.

Solicitors take all of the professional risk and as a result of the 'administration fee', prot margins are considerably reduced.

There is pressure to settle cases quickly and there is an apparent, if not an actual, conict of interest.Solicitors have got themselves into this mess.

Rather than simply accepting their fate, is it not time that solicitors thought about encouraging clients to come to see them directly rather than paying somebody else to do the advertising? My own practice, which specialises exclusively in personal injury work, certainly operates on this basis.I therefore urge caution.

The current position is not an immovable commercial reality.

To treat it as such will only make the position worse for everybody, except of course the claims farmers who deep down must think that solicitors are the biggest mugs of all.

Hugh M Joseph, Hugh Joseph Solicitors, Stockport