Mulderrigs Blog

An open letter to Rt Hon Lord Young
House of Lords
Westminster
5th October 2010

Dear Lord Young
I have seen the news coverage of your proposals for regulation of the so-called “compensation culture”.

I have been qualified as a solicitor for twenty-three years, and have run my own practice since 1989. Throughout that time I have specialised in personal injury claims on behalf of injured claimants, and I was first appointed to the Law Society’s PI Panel in 1992.

Coincidentally, my career has run almost perfectly in parallel with the relaxation in the rules regarding advertising by solicitors. During that time I have witnessed a number of high profile marketing disasters of the type which have no doubt influenced your views:-

1.
Claims Direct used a massive budget to advertise widely on TV for a shoddy service which resulted in many thousands of accident victims being massively overcharged.

2.
The Accident Group hired teams of untrained people to loiter in town squares and supermarket car parks to accost members of the public. Unsurprisingly, the company took on many thousands of claims which had no realistic prospect of success. When the balloon went up with that company the owner fled the UK and their staff were fired by text message.

3.
More recently the MOJ and the Claims Standard Council have started to certify claims management companies. These organisations generally have no legal qualifications of any kind and serve only to insert a commercial middle-man between the public and the expert lawyer they need to consult. Their only contribution to the process is to drive up the cost of litigation because many lawyers (not including my company) have fallen into the trap of paying huge “referral fees”.

I agree with you that steps ought to be taken to improve things for the public good. However, despite these problems, the so-called “compensation culture” is no more than a media-led myth.

The law which governs injury compensation claims has been well settled for many years. Injured claimants must prove their claims to a very exacting standard against insurers who are powerful and effective opponents.

Insofar as there is a culture which encourages safety in the workplace or in organised public events, the principal consequence is that there are now thousands of workers who are still alive who might otherwise have suffered fatal accidents, and thousands of others who still have the requisite number of working arms, legs, fingers and toes.

There is no culture, caused either by lawyers or by the HSE which prevents or discourages fun-days, cheese rolling events or school sports days. Purely by way of an example, my ten year old son has Down’s syndrome, but took a skiing trip to Switzerland this year. It’s much closer to the truth to observe that sensible and safe activities sometimes fall victim to the kind of politically correct nonsense from ill-informed public servants that means we now have chairpersons rather than chairmen, and have schools prevented from teaching children about Baa Baa Black Sheep.

A blanket ban on advertising of personal injury services would deny access to justice to many people who have a legitimate and urgent need for expert advice.

A simple and sensible proposal

The Lord Chancellor’s Dept was warned by the Law Society more than twenty years ago to restrict or prohibit the involvement of non-lawyers in personal injury claims. If that advice had been heeded at the time, we would not have ended up in this mess.

In my view there are a number of simple and sensible steps which could be taken to improve matters:-

A.
Outlaw claims management companies immediately. They don’t have any of the requisite professional skills, they are not regulated with any force.

B.
Restrict personal injury advertising to those solicitors who can properly demonstrate professional expertise in that field of law – Members of the Law Society’s Personal Injury Panel and/or firms with the Law Society’s LEXCEL quality mark. (Yes, my firm would qualify on both counts, but so would many other legitimate personal injury lawyers).

If advertising is restricted to qualified solicitors you would immediately gain control via the code of conduct which binds all solicitors.

If advertising is restricted to proven experts it can only improve the position for accident victims who have legitimate cases.

C.
Outlaw the payment of referral fees by solicitors to claims management companies, and impose suitably strict sanctions. The Law Society has repeatedly stepped back from addressing this issue; referral fees serve only to add a layer of substantial and pointless expense to the process.

I hope that you will find the time to read this correspondence, and that my comments will give you some cause for thought.

If I can assist you in your deliberations I would be happy to help in any way that I can.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Mulderrig
Mulderrigs Solicitors Ltd