Debating fees

I read with increasing annoyance and disbelief the letter from Jim Diamond of Legalbudgets Limited (see [2002] Gazette, 30 May, 18).

The editorial he complains about rightly referred to certain defendant costs draftsmen as a cottage industry when you consider the proliferation of such businesses since legal aid was withdrawn.

I am not meaning to tar Mr Diamond with the same brush, but he seems unaware that numbers of such outfits have sprung up to take advantage of working on commission.

The commission is based on how much they can knock off claimant solicitors' bills.

Perhaps he is also unaware of the fact that these so-called cost negotiators have no intention of entering into reasonable negotiation.

Instead, they routinely offer 50% of any bill that comes their way, and just as routinely refuse point blank to pay any sort of success fee by repeating the mantra that the Court of Appeal judgment in Callery can be ignored pending the findings of the House of Lords.

Do they seriously believe that the House of Lords will do away with success fees, when they were introduced by the Lord Chancellor as a way of compensating for the loss of legal aid and after the Court of Appeal had heard from every interested party in the kingdom?

Louis Brody, Louis Brody & Co, Rochdale