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This makes me sad, despite your kind comments John. I qualified in 1991 and have worked for and met some amazing lawyers over my years in PI, people who really believed in what they were doing, worked very hard to get the best possible result for the injured client and who have brought great peace of mind to seriously injured parties and their families, and yet the comments above demonstrate why we face an uphill battle to improve our "image" when most of us have never actually changed our modus operandi in the first place.

After all these years of helping working people - and that has been my line, not RTAs on the whole - I find myself giving oblique answers when a new acquaintance asks what sort of law I practice.

There was some jubilation when the crackdown on CMCs/referral fees was announced as they were seen as the source of the image problem, but it's clear from the above that is not the case and that we are a long way from tackling the problem of cold calls and "fraudulent" (or rather encouraged) claims.

Only today I took a call from a potential new client with very minor injuries sustained in an RTA over 2 years ago. Why had she suddenly decided to make a claim? Because, as she put it "every time I pick up my phone it tells me there's £3,000 waiting for me"

Where are these messages coming from, what is the financial motivation behind encouraging minor claims and how can we stop it?