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Um no the claimant PI sector is not a law unto itself.

It is full of shysters, certainly, and like bacteria these have multiplied due to the connivance of third parties such as CMCs, car hire companies and some (not all) medical agencies and the making of pre-med offers by insurers.

Crime is wrong obviously. Charging excess success fees is wrong. Charging inflated ATE premiums for kickbacks/commissions or the Box Legal model of never claiming on a policy, is wrong. If there is an angle people will take it and most of them are wrong.

It will actually be pretty easy for the SRA to look at this:

1. Identify the most likely offenders - insurers can help with this and would be glad to.
2. Go into 1 firm a day and look at say 100 files from recently closed to almost settled.
3. Any low value RTA with a premium above say £100 probably has a secret commission so if any are found dig deeper.
4. Any low value RTA with an hourly rate of say £350 or more is probably just to maximise a success fee, so dig deeper.
5. Any low value RTA rear end shunt with a success fee of more than say 25% is simply to maximise costs, so dig deeper.
6. Any cases identified where physio has been arranged at an inflated rate is probably a secret commission or the money is being funnelled to an associate, so dig deeper.
7. If there is any credit hire - shoot everyone.
8. If it becomes apparent that the firm is a front for a CMC with all decisions taken by a non-director/partner, then investigate more.

It isn't just the firms nobody has heard of - I'm considering a potential claim against a large national firm that deducted a £50k success fee from a client with union membership.

After that it is a case of emailing all of the firms listing PI on the Law Society website and seeing who wants to take on some cases.

Just doing the above then intervening and the SRA could make a mint in fines - more than enough to fund it.


A claimant PI solicitor