UK think tank director urges end of no win, no fee deals

The director of UK think tank Civitas has said no win, no fee deals should be scrapped due to their “corrupting effect on the legal profession”.

David Green, who founded Civitas in 2000, sets out his argument in Democratic Civilisation or Judicial Supremacy?, a new book to be published next week.

Dr Green argues that conditional fee agreements (CFAs) and contingency fees – where lawyers take a share of the civil damages – should be cancelled to reduce the number of cases pursued purely for financial gain.

He writes: “Together, they have had a corrupting effect on the legal profession and have promoted the politicisation of the judiciary.

“For most of our history conditional fees were illegal under common law and the strongest opponents were the lawyers themselves. Now that we have had CFAs for some years we can see that the fears of earlier generations were understandable.”

His book analyses the evolution of the judicial system, including the impact of human rights legislation and the steady weakening of the common law crimes of maintenance and champerty until conditional fee agreements were legalised by the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 and implemented from 1995.

Dr Green writes that the “longstanding fears of judges who had enforced the laws of champerty and maintenance were disregarded” and the relaxations of the law “have permitted a vast increase in lawyer-driven litigation”.

He adds: “Until very recently the Law Society and the Bar Council were stalwart opponents of contingency fees, but recently they have been captured by less scrupulous members of the profession.

“The legal profession has become less a vocation guided by a code of ethics and more a business which looks upon particular statutes as opportunities for financial gain. The time has come for lawyers with a sense of vocation to reassert themselves.

“Lawyers have traditionally had an obligation to the court as well as to their client. They are not supposed to be the mere hired guns of one side in a dispute, prepared to pull every stroke in the book to win.

“They have a duty to seek the truth, which they should put above the narrow interests of their clients or their own interests in making money. But the opportunities offered by the Human Rights Act have proved too much for some.”