All this sorry tale is, though, is a condemnation of seemingly misleading marketing by ... the very ambulance chasers that you (rightly) deprecate. You say if you were "suckered" into these firms, but you miss the point that you would not be, as they do not do the work, they sell the cases on.

Solicitors have a duty to both manage client expectations and from the outset on the available information provide an estimate of the value of the claim and the likely costs of getting it. I presume you haven't any evidence that lawyers, as opposed to ambulance chasers, were doing this?

If I was a lawyer picking up leads from such a firm, I think I'd get pretty pi$sed off pretty quickly with people trooping in telling me they'd been told their claim was worth 50X what it was, and anyway, at this meeting, once told the claim was only worth 1/50th of that, surely the disaffected claimant would simply choose not to bother? So even there, where is the "suckering" so far as the lawyer is concerned?


For the reason I said, in practice, they really wouldn't.


That is nuts though, isn't it? Such actions can only reasonably instil a belief that ambulance chasers promising 10-50 x the true worth of a claim were the problem? What would H&S have done wrong? I don't follow that at all.


Maybe they have, but surely not for a reason totally unconnected with H&S? And your reply should have been "[iWell get yourself a new H&S man, then, as the problem is the catalogue of daft things some companies' H&S men do based on unreasonable fear of and comprehensive misunderstanding of what H&S actually requires[/i". This drives H&S nuts too. See their website.

Indeed, if you work at or know of someone working at a company whose H&S has decreed something nutty, the H&S has now even gone to the lengths of setting up a [url=http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/myth-busting.htm Myth Busters Challenge Panel[/url to scrutinize such decisions.

it doesn't get much publicity. Had anyone on here ever even heard of it? But thankfully it is being used, and so making a start on dispelling the myths. Worth a read:
[url=http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/myth-busting/index.htmMyth Busters Challenge Panel findings[/url

so we agree

My point was and is that the false expectations raised by some lawyers (I can mention a case but cannot in public) have attracted claims in the hope of easy and excellent recompense when really there was no or limited recompense.

Iain (who I know) is and my past existence was in H&S.

I'm glad you agree with me. However, the above was not your point. A lawyer raising false expectations in one case is not at all the same thing as what you originally said:

That would only be "the problem" if it happened so much that it was kind of endemic in the trade, whereas you refer to a single case, and can't even give details of it. I think to claim from some isolated cases that such behaviour is "THE problem" is grossly unfair on the hundreds of lawyers doing the job properly and doing no such thing.

Isolated bad apple lawyers will always exist, same as any other trade. The main difference with solicitors is that people have probably the best recourse to compensation for professional negligence, coupled with millions of pounds' worth of compulsory insurance, and a tough disciplinary process in cases of wrongdoing and poor service, of anybody else that they may ever deal with.

So we certainly vehemently disagree that "Lawyers promising fabulous pay-outs" is "the" problem, and I know of no evidence that this is any sort of significant issue at all and if it was, the SRA has the ability and willingness to strike them off.

When a possible customer rings, they think they are talking to a solicitor ... if they are not then your "trade" union (The Law Society) has enough prowess to get rid of this problem... you haven't.

I have referred to more than one case where expectations (OK possibly not by solicitors) were raised when the reality is different.

The one case was not H&S but employment: the customer was told it could be won under H&S rules: once the evidence was handed in to the solicitor's office, he withdrew but the customer (member) had withdrawn our right to represent her ... result sacked and national exposure.
I remember her saying to me, "My lawyer has said he's glad I've come to me as he will win this and I'll keep my job and be rewarded." The words are burned into my conscious.

Absolutely not, What powers does the Law Society have? For a start, it warned about the folly of allowing these sort of organisations but was ignored. The warnings were dismissed as pure self-interest, lawyers wanting to keep the work for themselves and not let anyone else into the market. Finally the government has after many years done a U-turn and decided to ban referral fees, but will struggle to do so as the industry of leeches is now so vast and so rich, they will struggle to control it.

I am certain that if someone was reported to the Law Society for impersonating a solicitor, they would act on that. But I doubt that would ever happen and what evidence, short of highly unlikely telephone recordings, could there be?


And I'm sure ambulance chasers will say pretty much anything to get their commission. Precisely because they are in reality unregulated in how they go about their business.


Not sure that says much at all. From what you say, on the face of it, based on what client said, a case worth investigating, then when the evidence is gathered it doesn't stack up, so lawyer rightly withdraws. Isn't that in fact a case where the lawyer should be praised for not "pursuing a hopeless case"?