While Martin Cockx may well 'go home and open a bottle of champagne' if all claims management companies go out of business (see [2005] Gazette, 27 January, 3), and while many other personal injury solicitors may nervously and sheepishly nod their heads in agreement in public, in private many will be worried people. If all claims management companies do go out of business, then personal injury solicitors will have to get their hands dirty and actually go out and get the business in themselves - something that is totally alien to many in the profession. Why does Mr Cockx think that so called 'claims farmers' came into being in the first place? It was precisely to fill the void left by the fact that while many solicitors are good at puffing themselves up with pomposity, when it comes to going out and meeting 'Joe Public' and attracting work, that is a different matter.


Claims management companies or similar have been in existence in one form or another, as far as I am aware, since the early 80s. When I was cutting my teeth in road traffic accident personal injury work in Manchester in those days, they were around mainly in the form of fledgling credit-hire companies. One attracted work from these outfits by proving you were good at the work. When I started my own personal injury practice in the early 90s, I managed to convince some of these outfits that I was worth sending work to. And to supplement this I got recommendations from back-street motor repairers, individual insurance brokers, and car hire companies. I did not pay a penny in fees, but got the work and proved I could do it, so I got repeat business.


I am sure that what really gripes many solicitors are the referral fees that are now charged by 'claims companies'. And who was it that ensured that referral fees became the norm? Good old solicitors - mainly those who were envious of the fees that established plaintiff personal injury solicitors were generating but who had no means of attracting the attention of the claims companies other than by waving pound notes under their noses.


So it is all very well the profession rubbing its hands together at the prospect of all claims companies being wiped out (and there are some good and ethical ones as well as some cowboys), but please do not anyone be fooled into believing that a grateful public will come rushing into the open arms of the profession, with their accident claims in tow.



Carl Waring, Great Hallingbury, Hertfordshire