As the headline case rumbles on, Dan Stacey explores the courts’ previous stances on the issue of fiduciary duties & solicitors’ remuneration
- Previous rulings, both before and after the Attorneys’ and Solicitors’ Act 1870, established the position of the courts on fiduciary duties and solicitors’ remuneration.
- There is no indication that such duties relating to remuneration do not survive into the present.
The ongoing YouTube soap opera of Belsner v Cam Legal in the Court of Appeal is now to have further screenings on 4, 5 and 6 October 2022. It is a convenient opportunity to consider fiduciary duties and solicitors’ remuneration, one of the issues at stake in the appeal. It is suggested here that a solicitor owes a fiduciary duty to deal fairly with the client in respect of remuneration before and during the currency of the retainer.
Fair dealing
First, that a fiduciary duty is owed by a solicitor to a client is not in doubt: eg Clark Boyce v Mouat [1994] 1 AC 428 at p437E. That is due to the element
