If you were giving career advice to a room full of eager young students, would you seriously advise them that the legal profession was a morally better choice than say, prostitution?

It'll be interesting to see what the SRA have to say about this rlmotley crewrl

Another story which highlights the complete bollax that surrounds party politics and separately the ridiculous funding methods of all political party's.

Edit out the flim-flam of the story and what you have is a law firm who two days ago have been accused of inventing claims for their own financial gain, a situation which can be summed up succinctly in the statement at the foot of the article (the truth in a Daily Mail story always appears at the end of a gobe flame so that they can't be accused of making up the rest of it), the statement says "The Solicitor Regulation Authority is now fully investigating whether there have been possible breaches of professional standards by the legal firms involved."

And there you have it, that is the story.

IF the company(s) are guilty of breaching professional standards then there is regulation to punish them and IF their controlling authority find them guilty as charged then the Labour Party have to make a decision of what to do with the money donated to them, but only at that point, if the company(s) are found not guilty of the accusations then accepting money from them in donations is no worse than accepting money from any other source who's methods of earning that money may be seen as being offensive to some others.

Nicholas Soames fussing and blustering is just the example of party politics bollax, every party could turn over some stones and find nasty people hiding underneath them, the only surprise is that people are apparently surprised.

We know you're trolling, but just to be clear, you would advise a 15 year old girl at school that it would be equally morally valid to leave at 16 to sell her body on the streets, as it would be to go to university, get a law degree and qualify as a solicitor? Ok. Not sure how long your job in careers would last, tbh.
rlhttps://www.lawsociety.org.uk/support-services/events-training/excellence-awards/2013-winners/solicitor-of-the-year-private-practice/rl

Would you advise a 15 year old to sell her body in other ways i.e. consider a career in modelling?

Modelling is hardly "selling your body". It is selling the clothes you are modelling.

I have a problem with lawyers/solicitors who encourage and sometimes actively assist helping their clients to lie. That isn't a comment on the entire profession, like any industry they have their bad and their good.
I don't know what can be done about it, other than maybe a more aggressive, proactive regulatory/investigative body that actively tries to weed out the bad ones.

As for party funding, it appears to just be legalised corruption. I'd limit donations to £50 per person, the rest made up by public money. I'm sure some kind of reasonable system of allocating money to political parties based on their votes at both local and national level could be created. Combine that with banning MP's from receiving any income other than their parliamentary salaries (which I'd raise quite significantly) and whilst it'd increase the cost of parliament to the public it'd eliminate a lot of corruption.

A slightly different topic, but I wonder how long before a lot of the Savile claims are exposed as complete lies? It seems pretty much anyone can claim they were abused and now the fund is setup they will get paid out.

I once met him in a restaurant in Leeds. We had a chat. I might ring up the solicitors acting for the 'victims' and say he groped me. Could get a few thousand out of it.

It is blatantly apparent there are a lot of solicitors on the bandwagon of encouraging people to bring borderline vexatious claims. Which is one of the reasons the government decided to reform the employment tribunals and slash fees for personal injury claims.

On the other hand, I know a lot of very competent solicitors. Most practise criminal law and get paid peanuts for doing it.

On what basis does "it seem" so? Unless you have some evidence, I'm assuming that making a false claim is likely to get you collar felt in the normal way.


Or not. What do you think a "grope" in a restaurant would be worth? It is obvious you've no idea on what basis a claim might be valued, or how that process would work.


Not to me, it isn't. Why would they? Not only are such likely to lose, and very likely hit such lawyers hard in the pocket, they would risk getting struck off. Again, do you have a basis for this claim, - maybe even, god forbid, an "example" - or just a Daily Wail reader?


The reforms to employment rights were nothing more than a cynical windfall for the Tories big business chums. Tribunal claims are something like 80% down, simply because sacked people (who can now be sacked at a whim within 2 years) don't have any income with which to pay the fees. But maybe you can give examples of borderline vexatious claims that have won?


Don't worry, the government is putting 80% of them out of work too.

There is a constant flow of 18 year olds signing up to three year law degrees at most universities.

Most of them find it difficult to get their one month unpaid intern placements arranged during their final year let alone a "proper" job in a law firm after graduation, for most its just another degree that means they get a job in office admin at a paperclip company, or similar.

The ones who dream of having a desk in a large busy practice with their own clients and a best suit for court are in the main dreaming, your figure of 80% is probably on the low side.

rlLittlejohnrl makes an eloquent point regarding these chancers.

The article raises a couple of good points, and then fills the rest of his contracted commitment to write an article of x-hundred words by simply prattling on about nothing much in particular, and therein lies the skill in deciphering newspaper journalist stories, pick out the relevant facts and disgard the remaining 98% of the story as mere opinion, flim-flam and filler.

He does make one pointed remark though...




Is he suggesting that right-wing lawyers would not deign to "turn justice upside-down", what does he mean by "turn justice upside down" anyway, does he not realise that most court cases, especially those taken under relatively new legislation are designed to challenge the robustness (or not) of those laws and that every single law that we follow, whether British or European or International, has had to face numerous challenges in court, indeed it could be argued that the very job of law practitioners is to challenge the law ?

And if right-wing lawyers would not attempt to "turn justice upside-down" does this mean in consequence that their right wing politics would prefer NOT to have human rights enshrined in international law ?

The crass Littlejohn, whose job is of course to be the standard bearer Wail reader on crack and stir the loins of Outraged of Chiping Sodbury, deliberately misses the point entirely. No sane person would dispute that it is reprehensible to advance fraudulent claims, as the claimants have reportedly done. The question is simple; do we or do we not want a system where IF a foreign prisoner has been abused / tortured etc., he can take any action against his abusers who even Littlejohn would concede ought not to break the law and torture prisoners. The fact that these claimants tried to pursue fake claims id irrelevant to the question of whether a person with a valid claim should be able to pursue it. Human Rights - as imbecilic ranters like Littlejohn know - is hardly a "conspiracy: The Human Rights Act 1998 was enacted by the sovereign Parliament of this country. It codifies into our law European Convention on Human Rights protections, into UK law. The Convention itself came into force in, er, 1953 so after 45 years of it, the government decided to formally incorporate it into law. To suggest that any of this is therefore a "racket" or some "conspiracy" is, frankly, nuts.

I have spent enough time around the legal profession to have witnessed:

Vexatious claims issued in the Employment Tribunal (prior to the introduction of fees). Because claimant solicitors knew respondent first would pay a few grand for to get rid of the claim, rather than fight it.

Letters of claim sent on near hopeless personal injury cases, in the hope the insurer would offer a quick settlement, most probably on a 50/50 basis. If it looked like the claim was going to be contested, it would be ditched.

Costs being grossly inflated.

As for the Savile stuff, it appears there is a fund in place that pretty much anyone can claim from. There are serious concerns that there is no proper mechanism to place to test the credibility of claimants. Considering the large amount of people claiming, it is inevitable that a number are fraudulent. Which is exactly what has happened with all the Phil Shiner / Leigh Day stuff.

I hope Shiner and Leigh Day get smashed by the SRA, and that a lot of the money paid to them is recovered by the public purse.

Because no law firm wants to pay hundreds (or thousands) of pounds in upfront fees, to fund a claim that will probably get struck out or ultimately defeated. Anyone would issue anything when there was no fees, and thus no risk to do so, since costs are almost never awarded in the ET. The idea was based around the fact that the Respondent would pay a few grand for the Claimant to go away, rather than thousands of pounds in legal fees to fight the claim. Back in 2012 I saw some research that the average cost in legal fees for responding to an ET claim was £8,500. If you can offer the Claimant £3,000 to go away, it made good business sense.



I have personally seen hopeless cases settled on a 50/50 basis. Also, there are (or were) entire business models based on paralegals writing speculative letters of claim on complete and utter rubbish cases, with the intent being the claim would be ditched should the insurer deny liability.



Agreed. And there are. Many small law firms run 'in the red'. Also, there is no shortage of law firms going out of business.



Your argument is self-defeating. The fact there is so much scrutiny of solicitors' bills, and an entire industry built around arguing over costs, reflects the concerns about grossly inflated legal bills. This is also another reason that the Government has introduced fixed-fees for many types of cases.