Compensation culture and lawyers salaries to the rescue

In what was presumably post-Easter sluggishness, the newspapers were mostly quiet on the legal front in the last week, but the hardy perennials of compensation culture scares and lawyers salaries offered more than enough spice to fill many column inches.First up was Londons Evening Standard (18 April), which devoted a double page splash to the bounty hunters who stalk accident victims, claiming that law firms are resorting to ever more brazen tactics to generate profits from compensation culture, even going so far as taking out adverts within hospitals so that they can catch accident victims as early as possible.

According to the paper, despite the fact that Claims Direct last week closed 13 of its 17 high street offices because they werent generating enough business, there is no sign of any sanity returning to the market place, mainly because ambulance chasing lawyers are thinking of even more extreme ways of harassing the public into suing as competition gets even fiercer.The Standard appeared to have something of a bee in its bonnet, as the following day a vituperative editorial appeared, spitting that Britains compensation culture in its full grotesquerie means that ambulance chasing has become the least of what some of Britains more shameless law firms will do to whip up business.

Struggling to be heard over the rattling of its cage, the Standard claimed that although lawyers like to think of themselves as a profession, they are in fact a ruthless trade, and moreover one where unlike their nearest equivalent, double glazing salesmen, these lawyers profits are made on the back of the public they profess to serve.

Even the NHS was not safe, as The Independent reported how it was the biggest target for compensation claims in Britain (17 April), claims which cost the taxpayer an estimated 10 million in legal aid payments last year.The Telegraph jumped on a similar bandwagon, with an article on legal expenses insurance asking readers who have slipped on a grape in the supermarket or tripped over a computer cable in the office where they would go for compensation advice, and more importantly how much would end up in the pockets of an ambulance chaser? (17 April).Not as much as you would think, according to a survey conducted this week by The Guardian (21 April).

The paper asked individuals around the country to estimate what people earned in a number of professions, from vicar to hairdresser, and then compared the results with reality.

Perhaps inevitably, the perception of solicitors salaries headed towards the high end of the scale, with one disgruntled Londoner claiming that When I got my mortgage my solicitor tried to rip me off they must be on about 90,000.

The reality 24,000 for legal aid work and an average of 40,400 for solicitors in private practice, according to the Law Society was lower than expected, but did not take into account partner salaries or wages in top City firms.

These are salaries which, more than one paper pointed out, occasionally caused heads to spin.

David Sullivan apparently the voice of common sense at the Sunday Sport stated that the lawyers in the ill-fated Leeds footballers trial were on 100,000 retainers just to take the case (16 April).

Disconcertingly, he did not seem to have the courage of his convictions if these figures are wrong, Ill happily print a correction but the voice of common sense still asked Just why do solicitors and barristers charge so much money? And moreover How can the Law Society and the Bar Council allow this state of affairs?A less tub-thumping piece appeared in The Times, drawing attention to the growing band of lawyers earning 1 million a year, and asking as Americas skies darken with recessionary clouds, how long can the 100 or so US firms operating in London sustain such rates of pay? (18 April).

Victoria MacCallum