PI market post-Jackson

Small and medium-sized personal injury firms are struggling following the Jackson reforms and the ban on referral fees, leading solicitor Patrick Allen has warned. 

Writing in this week’s NLJ, Allen, senior partner at Hodge, Jones & Allen, says the ban prevents those firms from acquiring clients at affordable cost, and therefore, nine months on, the flow of new work has dried up.

Consequently, small PI firms are closing or being taken over. Any firms that do have cash “are in that brief cartoon moment before they fall to the earth”.

He predicts the market “will now be dominated by the big firms with a few niche firms filling the gaps”.

Last month, Australian law firm Slater & Gordon announced a deal to purchase most of Pannone & Co. It has also purchased Russell Jones & Walker, Fentons, Taylor Vinters, Goodmans and John Pickering and Partners. 

Allen also questions the Andrew Mitchell “plebgate” costs decision, where Mitchell’s lawyers were sanctioned for non-compliance with the new Civil Procedure Rules. 

He asks: “Can it be just and proportionate to sanction a litigant £500,000 for a procedural failure which cost at most one court hearing of 60 minutes? 

“We can now expect satellite litigation at every turn as litigants try to squeeze advantage from any procedural error. I have heard of a case struck out because court bundles were not lodged seven days before the hearing even though everyone turned up ready for trial. 

“Indemnity insurance premiums are bound to rise.”