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David,

The problem with the "skin in the game" approach remains that the people with good arguable cases (say 60% chance of success) with serious, serious injuries / losses can't be funded by individual firms. Not the top end. It would bankrupt them, a la A Civil Action.

As for a system where a client cannot lose because the lawyer is paid anyway, either by legal aid or ATE - please tell me where I can get some of this legal aid / ATE that pays me either way. I've been doing this job for 15 years and I've only ever had disbursement funding. I know of no such setup.

We've moved from a system where we were given a fixed percentage uplift for risking our time against the possibility of not being paid at all (CFA with uplift) to not being paid anything if we lose and losing about £2k of our own money in disbursement funding. I'm happy with that risk - but for god's sake don't pretend it's easy for us, or that those marginal cases I mentioned above aren't going to get passed over for more slamdunk cases.

The American system only works because of the extraordinary high punitive awards. Firms settle because they don't want to be bankrupted by an excessive award. We don't have that system and I think you'd find very few insurers sticking their hands up in support of that one.

I think we're edging towards a fair system, but if you believe that a "no risk" system already exists, then may I humbly suggest you've either never done high end PI or you're probably no longer in the profession.