You know, I have a lot of sympathy for you ambulance-chasing solicitors.
There you are, hurtling down busy streets in pursuit of the big white van - without a siren or flashing lights but still expected to keep up.
Perhaps we should introduce a speed limit for ambulances.
After all, if they’re going too fast, the ambulance-chaser is going to crash and require an ambulance.
Cue another chasing solicitor, bravely keeping pace until they suffer an accident themselves.
And so on and so forth.
Of course, you and I both know the ‘ambulance-chasing solicitor’ is largely a myth created by right-wing media and politicians with a rigid and dangerous agenda.
Sure, there are rotten apples out there lacking in scruples, but lumping them in with all solicitors is like comparing me with a journalist from, say, the News of the World, simply because we both happen to produce words.
The government has fallen for this ambulance-chasing idea hook line and sinker, using terms like ‘spurious claims’, ‘fat cat lawyers’ and ‘litigious society’ as if they’re indisputable.
Ken Clarke gleefully unleashes vengeance on those couch-potatoes only tearing themselves from Jeremy Kyle to phone in a ‘no win, no fee’ claim they saw during the adverts.
No longer will you scrounge from the system and rob those poor insurance companies, says courageous Ken.
But imagine, for a second, the beneficiary of the no win, no fee arrangement is not a benefits cheat looking for a slippery floor for their next six-figure payout.
Imagine they live in the Third World.
Imagine they are so poor they cannot feed their family, that they are forced to work in such dreadful conditions that tragic accidents are a routine occurrence.
Imagine this living hell is permeated by a greedy multi-national corporation wishing to dump some toxic waste on their doorstep.
Or a mining company that treats basic safety precautions like a trivial luxury.
Or imagine whole communities subjected to the sort of human rights abuses we can only imagine in our nightmares.
These are people who rely on the guarantee of receiving their full compensation at the end of cases.
And without this conditional fee agreement, the few law firms willing to take on their cause will have to turn many away.
One recent lawsuit against a multi-national in Africa involved 55,000 submissions - requiring months of manpower for the claimant side, and unpalatable risk.
As the solicitor Martyn Day, partner at Leigh Day & Co, told me at a meeting of firms and human rights groups this week, he would ‘not dream of’ taking money off needy claimants for success fees, but there will be difficult choices when deciding whether to take on their case in the first place.
The government’s hacking away at civil litigation rules is not just ill-advised, but immoral.
It rips away the one levelling factor offered to claimants as they battle against corporations with legal teams the size of the Man City squad.
We’re chasing justice here, not ambulances, and it’s about time the government realised that.
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