What’s the difference between a bribe and a referral fee?

Those solicitors who are the most vitriolic critics of referral fees fail to draw a distinction, as the Gazette’s postbag consistently testifies.

One can see where they are coming from.

A bribe is defined as the act of ‘promising, offering, or giving something, usually money, to (a person) to procure services’.

What's right for third parties, including the public, does not enter the equation.

And so it is with referral fees, as far as many of those who would like to see a ban are concerned.

But their arguments have once again fallen on deaf ears, the Legal Services Board’s latest pronouncement on the subject confirms.

The board has effectively passed the buck back, stipulating only that ‘approved regulators make sure that consumers know when referral fees are in operation and to whom they are being paid’.

So far, so predictable.

What is perhaps more surprising is why the Legal Services Consumer Panel is so sanguine.

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After all, it would appear implicit that, where a referral fee is paid, the client is not directed to the best adviser for them, but merely an adviser prepared to pay a ‘sweetener’.

Is ‘lining the pockets of intermediaries’, as the Law Society puts it, really the best way to safeguard the public interest and access to justice?

The evidence is, at the very least, inconclusive.