Top judge attacks lawyers' fees

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Leading article: Swim against the tide

One of Britain's most senior judges has attacked the huge fees paid to lawyers. The Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, described the earnings of solicitors and barristers as "extravagantly high" and urged people to use "expensive lawyers" only as a last resort.

In an interview with The Independent, Lord Phillips, one of the top four judges in the country, said the high fees were driving up insurance premiums as it was insurance companies that were footing the legal bills.

The head of civil justice in England and Wales, and the former chairman of the BSE inquiry, he warned: "Lawyers' fees have steadily but incrementally increased and it's very difficult to know what to do about it. I believe that the amounts that some are earning, both in the solicitors' profession and at the Bar, are extravagantly high." The highest paid solicitors in the top City law firms now earn £1m a year while a select group of commercial barristers can command annual fees of up to £1.5m.

"For the very stars of any profession, very large earnings can be justified simply on the basis of supply and demand, but on some occasions I think they are paid more than they should be. The difficulty is that it is the litigant who has to bear the cost. Litigants of course include, and very largely consist of, insurers who fund the liabilities. The costs of civil litigation in this country are very large and that is partly attributable to the fact lawyers are very expensive."

Lord Phillips said reforms introduced three years ago by his predecessor, Lord Woolf, now the Lord Chief Justice, had failed to cut the cost of going to court.

A report published by the Law Society and the Civil Justice Council, chaired by Lord Phillips, found that the civil justice reforms drawn up by Lord Woolf in 1999 had only been partly successful. "Reducing cost was a major objective of the reform process," it concluded. "Initial indications do not suggest that case costs have decreased. Each potential saving in the reform is offset by other changes which require more work or bring forward work to an early stage."

Lord Phillips, who acknowledged the success of Lord Woolf's reforms in creating a more efficient and settlement-friendly court system, said adversarial litigation was still too "luxurious" for smaller cases.

"The adversarial system is a Rolls-Royce system. It is too luxurious to be justified when you are dealing with small claims." A typical case of about £10,000 should not require two solicitors, two barristers, a judge and an expert witness, Lord Phillips said. It was important that the cost of the litigation was proportionate to size of the case.

The Law Society responded to Lord Phillips' comments by saying: "All along we have taken a leading role in the implementation of civil justice reforms and will continue to work with the Government and the judiciary to find the most cost-effective ways of ensuring justice for solicitors' clients.

"The Law Society is committed to alternative dispute resolution [such as using mediators rather than lawyers to settle disputes] and encourages lawyers to seek fair results to disputes at the earliest opportunity." But Lord Phillips also praised solicitors and barristers for doing more free work for the good of the community. "I think a lot is being done by the Bar and solicitors' profession to encourage pro bono work. There's been a magnificent response from both."

Lord Phillips backed Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the most senior judge in the House of Lords, who called last month for a Supreme Court to replace the judicial committee of the House of Lords. "I'm in favour of the separation of powers. My feeling is that there is quite enough for the highest court in the land to do dealing with judicial matters."