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The article links back to one in December in which the Competition and Markets Authority stated that "people struggle to make informed choices because of a lack of transparency about price, service and quality" and that "[f]ollowing a year-long study, the CMA concludes that the legal services sector is not working well for individual consumers and small businesses."

The LSB's drive originates in the CMA's study.

The point both organisations miss is that legal services are not, in the main, remotely comparable to most other services or high street products. This is because the law has developed very well to provide a fair(ish) approach to the very broad range of problems that human ingenuity and stupidity can devise. Additionally, and importantly, in many matters the degree of complexity and difficulty is influenced by the actions of third parties over whom we and the client have no control. That is an obvious feature of litigation, but can arise in transactional matters too. Comparisons with other services like plumbing, accountancy, builders and the like are unhelpful because they are quite different matters. The nearest might be medicine, where (say) a headache could be something cured by a few aspirin or might be early signs of a brain tumour: advising at the outset meaningfully on the cost of cure, and what would be involved is unrealistic. But even that analogy is false. The doctor only has to deal with one human body, probably co-operative, and experience and statistics will say that a headache is 1,000 times more likely to be just a headache and not something more serious. And thanks to the NHS the patient has no cost to worry about.

Even consensual transactions like conveyancing can end up being complicated, because of the actions (or inaction) of the counterparty. In 1986 we bought our first flat, and a colleague did the conveyancing. There turned out to be a problem with the buildings insurance (each flat had its own different buildings insurance, in defiance of the lease provisions) which took time to resolve. My colleague recorded time (out of curiosity) and by completion had racked up £1,500 plus VAT and disbursements.

Personally I think the longer term answer to the likes of the LSB is (a) mandatory scale fees for things like conveyancing and probate, and (b) greatly simplified court rules, and a speedier process, for disputes up to say £50,000 in value. And perhaps a much more interventionist judiciary to help stop the procedural horseplay that opponents indulge in to drive up the cost and force an inadequate settlement. I also believe in moonbeams and fairies.

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