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Sad but it was inevitably what they were going to do. It doesn't make it any less unjust. We should oppose it ,and not because many more lawyers will be out of a job, but because both the quality of and access to justice of many innocent worthy claimants will be substantially reduced. Unfortunately we are dealing with a government that has only the most stunted and warped sense of justice and fairness. Hence the bedroom tax and lots of other nasty unfair stuff since. Our best hope is a slightly maverick Lord Chancellor who though he did profound damage to our education system does (oddly for a Tory) seem to have some basic sense of decency and fairness. (Look at some of the stuff of his predecessor that he is reversed albeit not in the civil arena). However if he is on the losing side of EU referendum will he even stay in his post? Cant help thinking it's a bit like King Canute though (who in fact knew that he couldn't stop the waves coming in but took a stand just to prove a point). Best we can realistically hope for I believe is damage limitation to try to achieve something better and less damaging than Lord Justice Jackson proposed by e.g.:
seeking to limiting extension say to £100,000
making the fixed costs tailored to different types of cases
exempting certain cases altogether (as we have now in fast track PI cases)
having some escape routes (particularly to encourage reasonable behaviour by defendants so that they don't exploit fixed costs rules-which inevitably they will try to)
setting the fixed costs at sensible levels that relate to the actual averages normally recovered
providing uplifts for higher damages recovered within the bands (as we have now for fast track fixed costs)
very importantly, making sure that whatever the figure it is automatically index linked to increase in say annual average wages each year.