Almost all the predictions for conditional fees, which have been in operation for over a year, have been proved wrong.

The claims of the prophets of doom and those who saw conditional fees as the salvation for a beleaguered legal profession remain unfulfilled.

As yet, there have been no reports of firms coming unstuck financially because they failed properly to assess the risks involved in taking on no win, no fee cases, nor of lawyers growing fat by duping clients with dead-cert cases into paying unfairly high success fees.The Law Society-endorsed Accident Line Protect, which protects a losing client from having to pay the other side's costs, has undergone minor tinkering but seems to work well.

Cynics who predicted that insurers were biding their time and would rapidly hike up the premiums once the scheme was up and running have, so far, been disappointed.

Although large sections of the Bar remain at best sceptical and at worst hostile to conditional fees, there are no wide-scale reports of solicitors being unable to find barristers to take on cases.

The difficulties foreseen in transplanting the new payment arrangements on to a divided legal profession have proved more theoretical than real.Instead of causing a seismic shift one way or the other, it seems that conditional fees are making a small but growing contribution to increasing access to justice for personal injury plaintiffs.

One indicator that they are being quietly successful is the lack of interest the mainstream media has taken in their operation.

The most extensive press coverage has centred around Leigh Day's decision to run its multi-party action against the tobacco industry on a conditional fee basis after legal aid was withdrawn.

In this risky case -- the firm reckons it could lose up to £3 mil lion if it is unsuccessful -- senior partner Martyn Day says he had no trouble persuading leading personal injury barrister Dan Brennan QC to take it on.

The publicity surrounding the case has served to raise the profile of conditional fees generally.David Hartley, head of solicitors' remuneration at the Law Society, says that conditional fees seem to be working better than the Law Society dared hope.

Around 1100 Accident Line Protect policies were signed during the first year and the numbers per month are growing steadily, if not dramatically.Kerry Underwood is a long-standing champion of no win, no fee arrangements.

His St Albans' firm, Underwoods, has undertaken numerous cases on this basis and he gives lectures on the subject.

Mr Underwood says that, in his experience, those firms that are using conditional fee arrangements in reasonable numbers -- ten cases or more -- have reported no problems with them.Michael Napier, the senior partner of Sheffield-based Irwin Mitchell, reports a similar experience.

The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, of which he is immediate past president, held a series of seminars over a six-month period.

Mr Napier says he was struck at the outset of the seminar programme by how few of those attending had actually undertaken a conditional fee case.

However, as the months went by, a growing percentage of the audience indicated that it had taken the plunge.This is not to say that there are no problems with conditional fees.

For example, they are not a realistic option for some of the groups and individuals to whom they are theoretically meant to give access to justice.

Despite the Law Society's earlier hopes, there will be no quick expansion of the Accident Line Protect scheme to cover medical negligence cases.

The financing of disbursements is being tackled though a scheme that will allow solicitors to provide loans to clients for this purpose (see [1996] Gazette, 20 November,4).Other areas that remain problematic include the opposing views taken by the Bar and the Law Society over whether the conditional fee regulations can legitimately be interpreted to cover professional negligence cases arising from of PI claims.

The Society and the Lord Chancellor insist that they can; the Bar Council has advised barristers not to take on professional negligence cases on this basis.

There is also no clarification yet on whether lawyers will be able to charge a success fee for conditional fee cases involving children or people with disabilities.Mr Napier is concerned about the impact of the Advertising Standards Authority's (ASA) ruling against conditional fees being advertised as no win, no fee.

Although the Society is in talks with the ASA to agree an acceptable form of words, he fears the uncertainty means the message is not reaching as many people as it could.

If ads have to contain too many caveats and too much small print, potential clients may be put off from even approaching their solicitor.

See Conditional fees, page 30.