Fat cat lawyers ?
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/s...re/7729956.stm

I wonder when HMG will get tough on excessive legal fees. Oh that's right Parliament's full of lawyers isn't it.....

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Almost 17 million in 2006 just how much money do these people need? as Jean Valijean might have said" you will be first up against the wall come the revolution" ;)

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

I have never known a situation where the involvment of a lawyer didn't make it worse. Most of them are parasites promoting misery and unhappiness to make cash.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

At the risk of getting jumped on I am related to a retired solicitor whom has never been 'rich' and was never a fat cat..Mainly because he was a little independent business operating in Brixton..:(

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

I don't think the thread is aimed at the old small local type solicitors Maggy more at the new type of any case for no reason other then money type which seems to be the majority of them these days. Damn i missed the oppurtunity to jump on a mod :(.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

To be fair, this thread is dedicated to the fat cat minority not the decent hardworking variety (who almost certainly make up the vast majority) whose hard work and diligence has put right many wrongs and whose considerable efforts I have first hand experience of.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

To be honest I was protesting at the generalisation in post #3. ;)

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

That's OK then ;)

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Thats why i used the word most Maggy i know there are some decent ones but i was also referring to QC's not solicitors and most of them are what i said from the many i have met.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

But the Legal Aid Fund goes to all of those lawyers. Hardworking and supposedly fat cat. You also need to remember that while the brief might be charging that rate he is charging it to cover office costs, administrative support costs etc.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Hmmm..... I think you might be being a tad generous to some to our less honest legal folk... I think what's being alleged is that they earned the big bucks by taking a fat slice of the compensation recovered.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Hmmm, was the 2500 settlement after or before fees? 2500 is less than 10 hours of mlearnedgentlemens billable so a contingency may / may not be in the best interests of the client. Though these days may be more the case of filing the correct paperwork.
Thats the problem with contingency fees, they can result in a big payout to the lawyer, but if there is a loss the lawyer is eating the time for 0 fee income.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

That may be the nub of it - was there any realistic chance of any of these claims failing? If not then a slice of the payout agreed might be considered unfair.

Just found this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/s...re/7735996.stm

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Well they've been struck off !

and according to this:

"The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s (SDT - a division of the High Court) Annual Report to April 2007 reveals that only 67 Solicitors were struck off the Solicitors Roll when up to 17,000 Solicitors were reported to the Law Society year on year. Are 16,900+ complainants completely wrong or is this a really poor return?"

that's not exactly a common occurrence...

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

What John Mann the MP who took the firm to court didn't mention was, the amount of money paid out by Berresfords in taking British Coal to court fighting for the money the miners got for instance, it was Berresfords who started the deafness claims with British Coal, it was Berresfords who started the Vibration white finger claim against the Coal Board, it was Berresfords who started the chest claims against the Coal Board. If Berresfords hadn't started these claims in the first place the miners mentioned wouldn't have got ANY compensation. Berresords forked out money when all the other Solicitors walked away because they thought it was a non starter.

Berresfords acted for my late father with his claim for his chest illness, my father got one of the highest payouts in Nottighamshire which was in the £100,000+ area all he had to pay Berresfords was £275, for this £275 they took the calim to court, they acted on behalf of you when it came to you getting a fair claim, they even paid for you to have a private medical, they made sure the claim ran smoothly.

So Basically if it wasn't for Berresfords taking a risk with the Vibration white finger, deafness, and chest claims the miners woudn't have got any money from British Coal, they forked out money when all the other firms ran away.

John Mann is a very bitter man indeed.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

It was the same for the endowment claims, they charged 30% or so to send out a form for submittal, maybe write a couple of letters and get paid usually in the 1000's which rarely cost more than £100 to actually claim, all for a self creating legal argument as the biggest reason for a claim was the lack of disclosure at the point of endowment sale of penalties incurred by the endowment company that would affect the policy, which each and every claim amounted to being. This led to a quick death of the endowment tied to mortgage scheme from the 80's so subsequently a distinct lacking in investment in this area exacerbating the potential shortfalls even further.

Again the winners were the solicitor firms, the losers were Joe public. To all intense and purposes this sort of thing demonstrates exactly whats wrong with society today, why ganglords are taking over the streets and recruiting youth of varying ages at a very fast rate and it really does not matter what ideaology is behind it, money talks morals and respectability walks, and is especially so in an anarchistic style marketplace.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Taken from the link in post #14

Sorry Nidge but they may have begun well but frankly what they were doing in the end was unacceptable

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Got to agree. Money tends to have that effect on some people.....

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

I'm sorry Nidge but there is no way that the firm did all this for just £275. That's about one hour's worth of work. The medical alone is likely to have cost that much, and unless he had an exemption then just issuing proceedings - depending on when it was - would have cost 2 or 3 times that amount. They will have taken this money AND been paid by the DTI.

It's the topping up of fees and the way they advised clients to take cases on under CFAs because they were better for Beresfords not the clients that got them in doodoo.

Oh and Osem, the reason not every complaint results in a solicitor being struck off is because the overwhelming majority of complaints are for trivial reasons, whinges that they didn't get the outcome they wanted, rejected because they haven't bothered going through the solicitors own complaints procedure without a good reason, or minor stuff like delays and poor communication that doesn't warrant striking off. Oh, and the fact that there aren't even 17000 solicitors around to be reported ;)

Since the only professional thing about that site is the logo they stole off the LCS I would't put much faith in anything that's there if I were you :)

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Don't worry about me - I tend not to put too much faith in anything much these days ;) I posted that link because, despite quite a lot of searching, they were the only recent figures I could find. I wonder why that is...... :confused:

Anyway, I do of course realise that only a proportion of complaints would be deemed serious enough to consider the ultimate sanction but it'd be interesting to see more comprehensive figures. I did however find this:

http://www.lawcare.org.uk/PDF%20File...n%E2%80%A6.pdf

Which makes interesting reading even if it's almost entirely devoid of statistics.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Well it's true all they charged my father was £275, they only charged me £200when I got £11,000 from the coal board for vibration white finger, they charged me £150 when I got £4,000 for deafness if it wasn't for Berresfords taking these test cases on there would be no compensation for the miners.

I was informed today that a test case for beat knee has been withdrawn because of this case yesterday, Berresfords were footing the bill for the test case but after yesterdays outcome they have pulled out, this could leave thousands of ex miners with knee troubles thousands of pounds out of pocket.

So what if Berresfords took money off the DTI they did a good job for the Ex miners round here, you don't see any of them on the news complaining the only ones complaining are the ones in John Manns constituancy, John Mann has had a vendetta against these firms for along time now, they found a way to make a bit of money providing a service for a small fee if you won the case, like I mentioned they've acted for me twice now and I've been well impressed with their service and their fees.

John Mann is vary bitter person indeed.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

greedy b£$%&*(s.:mad:

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

If what they was doing was unacceptable why have there been no complaints from the ex miners from round here?? All the complaints are from John Manns constituancy not one is from round our way where most of the ex miners lived.

They've acted for me twice now and on both occasions they've done a cracking job for a good fee.

These ex miners who are moaning are the ones who've been given nothing in the way of compensation or have been given a little, something in the region of £1,000 if you get £1,000 you still have to pay a fee to the solicitors, lets get the 200,000 miners they've represented over the last 10 years and see if they've got anything bad to say about them? I doubt they'll have anything bad to say about them.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

I think the bit you have missed is

So no one should have paid anything out of their compensation because the DTI paid the solicitors.

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

In which case those poor unfortunate victims were deprived of much needed money due to them by their trusted legal advisors.... :mad:

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8028843.stm

What a decent chap eh?.... :rolleyes:

Given that some of the profits made were allegedly illegally obtained, are the authorities going to be acting to recover that money?

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Reminds me of that joke :-
Guy rings up a solicitor and asks " how much do you charge for three questions "
Solicitor replies " three thousand pounds " Guy says " that's a lot for three questions isn't it. Sol replies " yes, and whats your third question "

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

The solicitors that were struck off has had their appeal rejected

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/s...re/8390389.stm

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Wonder if they'll have to pay any of the £millions back??.... What do you reckon?... :rolleyes:

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

Hey, if you want to see the legal profession milking the nation, have a look at the ammounts paid to the QC's and solicitors on the Bloody Sunday Enquiry. Norn Iron got a couple more millionaires out of that enquiry.... :rolleyes:

Re: Fat cat lawyers ?
 

It is just a coincidence that the legal profession is traditionally so heavily represented in Westminster isn't it?....:rolleyes: