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I would be interested to know how many of the closed cases referred to for 2013/14 had pre-April 2013 retainers. I bet nearly all of them. It's therefore an inaccurate representation of what future costs will be.

I have to say, as a claimant solicitor, the removal of a 100% uplift and making claimants responsible for the success fee wasn't all bad. I accept it makes costs a lot more proportionate. Fixed costs on the other hand is not the right approach, particularly up to £250k. It will prevent genuine cases with significant injuries from being pursued. Forget the access to justice arguement for a second. The effect this will have on practitioners will be huge. I would be surprised if any solicitor/barrister reading this didn't know of someone that lost their job as a result of the Jackson reforms, on both sides of the table. For those of you not in the profession no doubt you've got fat cat images of rich solicitors finally having to come back to reality. The truth of the matter is it won't be the fat cats that suffer as a result of these changes. It will be the normal folk who no longer have jobs to go to.

The worst of it is, it has nothing to do with saving the public money. Whose insurance premiums went down post LASPO? I'd feel a lot better if the Government were honest about their motivations for these changes, even more so if they concentrated on reducing public spending on areas that really matter such as the £1.2bn pa that is apparently paid out on fraudulent benefit claims.