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@ John William Northam

Yes, I am a solicitor, and I also used to practise in PI work in the days where everyone acted fairly and we were paid a reasonable rate for the job.

I then watched in dismay as PI practice turned into a frankly disgusting free for all, snouts in the trough, orgy of greed where cases had to be bought in for hundreds of pounds a time.

It's nonsense to blame the insurers for excessive billing, it was the greedy lawyers who were running the PI firms.

I still have to this day a copy of a CFA prepared by a very large and well known firm of claimant lawyers in 2003 in relation to a PI claim. The CFA quotes rates of £350 per hour for a Grade 1 fee earner down to £240 per hour for a Grade 4 fee-earner. The success fee was set at the standard 100% for a win or 80% if the defendant admitted both liability and causation within the protocol time limit.

So for a routine open and shut claim that effectively settled in a few weeks even the lowliest trainee solicitor was being charged out at £432 per hour! And this was 11 years ago, when even a partner in a Magic Circle firm wouldn't have been charging that.

This gross and offensive level of greed was widespread, and even though such rates would obviously not have been achievable on assessment it's the very fact that the firms attempted to charge them that is so obscene.

It's not surprising firms were offering hundreds of pounds to get people signed up. Neither is it surprising that fraudulent claims were quite happily accepted via dodgy CMC's in the knowledge that the insurers would just succumb to what amounted to blackmail, with no risk of the case ever being subjected to the scrutiny of a court.

Everyone in the industry knows that CFA's were a licence to print money and they were ruthlessly exploited. Just look at the profits made by some of the specialist firms whose results are published.

So I reiterate that I am personally delighted that the avaricious solicitors that helped ruin our profession have finally got their just desserts. It's hard that it's impacted on decent lawyers and those clients who deserve a better service than they may now obtain but it was a price that had to be paid.