Paul Ashurst plunges into the murky waters of contingency fees
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With Law Society approval, underwritten by an American insurer and underpinned by a specialist personal injury panel, conditional fee agreements (CFAs) were hailed as the acceptable compromise that avoided the need for American-style contingency fees. Yet the advertising slogan “no win no fee” soon created a credibility gap. The public became willing to speak to claims farmers and not solicitors because the claims farmers said yes whereas solicitors said “yes, but...”. Collateral agreements were introduced to match slogan with fact. Middlemen, who willingly jumped on the bandwagon to take their slice of the profit, provided funds and the changes to the CFA that followed that led to the disaster we have today (see Days of Yore, p 674)
All change
The public have now taken to the concept that you should only pay if you win. We, therefore, need a straightforward and transparent system that meets the public's expectations and allows legitimate claims to find suitable funding. A system that reduces the need for the “hangers
