Throughout the global financial crisis and ensuing eurzone traumas, the Irish have suffered intense domestic pain to toe the international community’s line on debt management – but now they are getting fed up and lawyers falling into the firing line.

Feasting on carcasses

A senior judge last week launched a blistering attack on the professional services sector in the country as ‘feasting on the carcasses’ of Ireland’s struggling businesses. And a report in today’s Irish Times newspaper points out that while Mr Justice Brian McGovern was specifically referring to a bill from global accountancy practice Ernst & Young, there is little doubt that some of his ire could easily be interpreted as also targeting the country’s top law firms.
Writes John McManus in the Times: ‘Without a doubt the same big accountancy and legal firms that did so well during the boom seem to be doing equally well on the way down as they do legal work for the bodies tasked with sorting out the mess.’ He points out that the controversial ‘bad bank’ – the National Asset Management Agency, which was launched in at the end of 2009 in an attempt to pick up the pieces after Ireland’s property bubble burst –off its own bat forked out nearly €10 million in legal fees last year.

Champagne v stout

Bolstering the perception that lawyers are sipping champagne while the rest of the country can barely afford a half of stout, the newspaper points to recent government analysis of legal profession fees. Statistics from the National Competitiveness Council show that while professional costs generally have nosedived during the economic downturn, legal fees are more than 12 per cent higher than they were six years ago.
According to the Times article, the council’s figures show that ‘legal costs in Ireland are significantly more expensive than the overall OECD average cost, making it the fourth most expensive location benchmarked ... World Bank data suggests that this is driven by relatively high attorney fees’.