While not a member of the Law Society, I read the Gazette with great interest, particularly in relation to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and the extension of the RTA scheme to include employers’ and public liability claims.

Instead of the endless government push (urged by the insurance lobby) to reduce costs and make claims more streamlined, it could in one fell swoop drastically reduce legal costs, by: making legal expenses insurance (LEI) (with a standard minimum level of cover) a compulsory element of all new motor and home insurances (and other types of policies to make the cover more wide reaching); and providing claimants with the same freedom of choice of solicitor pre-issue as they currently have only from the point of issue.

If everybody had LEI that any solicitor could act under, conditional fee agreements and therefore success fees and after-the-event insurance would largely become redundant. There would be no incentive for solicitors to push to a hearing to achieve a 100% success fee, and so more matters would be likely to settle at an earlier stage.

As a costs draftsman, I am sick of the endless insurance and media witch-hunt regarding the level of legal costs. Defendant insurers, by way of how they choose to deal with any particular claim, remain in control of the costs they face, and if they do not like those costs they can have the court assess them. More largely unworkable schemes to try and control the claims process and resulting costs are not the answer.

Duncan Paine, Paine Legal, Whitchurch