Report comment

Let's try again as no one seems able to see the bigger picture.

Baron Macaulay – “The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”

Applied to solicitors, wouldn't that read something along the lines of: "The measure of a solicitor's real character is what he/she would do if there was no regulator of the legal profession." Perhaps that explains why so many solicitors' have an irrational fear of the SRA!

In relation to solicitors' overcharging, let's leave it to the maestro, Richard Susskind's 'Tomorrow's Lawyers':

'The shortcomings of hourly billing are well illustrated by an anecdote involving my daughter. When she was 12, she asked me for a summer job. I needed some administrative work carried out and she agreed to take on the task. She asked me how much I intended to pay her and I responded, unreflectively, that I thought I would pay her a certain amount per hour. She thought about that for a few seconds, smiled and then said, 'Well, I'll take my time then.' If a 12-year old can see the shortcomings of hourly billing, then it puzzles me that major international corporations cannot also see the problem here.'