If I remember rightly, referral fees are banned. I am troubled. I hear more than mere anecdotes of telephone calls to referrers from solicitors offering so much up to the end of April, then so much after that, per case. These are solicitors with no existing arrangements with potential referrers. How what is offered is not a referral fee beats me.

Am I missing something? Or are the teeth of the enforcers already so blunted by feeding off pre-packed sales of bust businesses in the legal services market, not to mention licensing insurance companies to purchase legal work through alternative business structures, that the subverters of the ban can knowingly go unpunished?

John Holtom, managing partner, Legal Solutions Partnership, Luton