No satisfaction

Regarding your recent article about women solicitors' dissatisfaction and their decision to quit personal injury (PI) work (see [2002] Gazette, 28 February, 1) - why should they be alone? I would have thought that most PI solicitors are thinking twice about continuing that work.

I have been in practice since 1964 conducting PI work.

As soon as legal aid was abolished for PI claims I thought long and hard about the situation and could find no useful or satisfactory reason why on earth I should continue with that work because of the risks involved.

I am not prepared to go down the conditional fee road as I find it morally repugnant, legally dissatisfactory, practically impossible and derisory in return.

I am afraid to say that the only cases I will take are the type where a passenger wearing a seat belt is claiming damages against the driver(s) in a head on collision or such other cases where liability cannot be in issue.

And even then I think twice about it.

The vulnerable public are being deprived of their rights because of the inequity of the system imposed on us by the Lord Chancellor.

This effectively means that at least one 'expert' (if I may disingenuously so describe myself) does not do the specialist work for which he has trained and turns away clients who most need that help and who are left with little alternative but the assistance of ambulance chasers.

There must be hundreds of equally or more qualified solicitors than I, in exactly the same situation, who have made the same decision.

Peter Gildener, Penzance, Cornwall