First4Lawyers in the Media: August 2019
Many of you will have seen the results of our annual State of the Market survey featured in the media recently. Over 100 PI solicitors responded and provided us with their views on the impact of the Civil Liability Act. The survey was covered by the Law Society Gazette, Legal Futures, Insurance Post, The Times – Law and Solicitors Journal.
Our managing director, Qamar Anwar followed this up with two articles examining the results, which were featured in Claims and the Personal Injury Brief Update.
Also featured in the Personal Injury Brief Update was Qamar’s analysis of the recent Court of Appeal decision in Herbert v HH Law which has left PI lawyers in no doubt about what they need to do before setting success fees, but as Qamar argues, leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
The Court of Appeal ruled that solicitors handling low-value personal injury claims since LASPO should have undertaken individual risk assessments before setting success fees – rather than just applying 100% across the board. Unfortunately, it is another appeal court decision that fails to recognise the reality of modern legal practice. It reflects a lack of understanding about the efficient, technology-led way that law firms handling high volumes of low-value litigation operate nowadays.
In more positive news, the arrival of Brett Storey into our business development team was featured on Legal Futures, Business Desk Yorkshire and in the Huddersfield Examiner. You can read more about Brett in our Meet the Team feature.
Finally, we continued our vocal opposition of insurer practices by reminding readers of Solicitors Journal that as a result of the Civil Liability Act 2018 going through Parliament, the government finally accepted the need for a formal checking process about insurers promises to pass on savings as a result of the Act.
Under the Act, insurers are required to provide information to the Financial Conduct Authority, which will be used by the government to judge whether the market as a whole has passed savings on to customers.
We do not believe the legislation goes far enough and think that there is a real danger that insurers may try to play unfairly. Take their increased rhetoric in recent months about an escalation in repair costs – we fear that they are already lining this up as another excuse for not passing on savings. So, we need to see a greater level of detail and transparency from insurers to ensure this does not happen.
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