A growing number of personal injury law firms are overcharging clients when losing "no win no fee" cases. The Legal Ombudsman has slammed lawyers who break the 'fundamental promise' of the system by handing clients unexpected bills and behaving unethically when the case goes wrong. The report, carried out by the watchdog, claimed that an 'increasingly agressive' marketplace meant that firms were not checking potential complaints properly before takign them on. Adam Sampson said that 'A business model which consistently overvalues the changec of success can drive lawyers into unethical practice in order to avoid financial meltdown' and queried whether the 'no win no fee' label should be used at all.
Law firms wrongly charging
The Ombudsman found that at least 600 cases dealt with by the watchdog involved conditional fee arrangements where lawyers wrongly demanded 'significant and unexpected costs' including a case where one client received a £24,000 costs bill for a successful outcome to his case after the law firm had withdrawn and left the client to represent himself. Source: itv.com
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
