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21 October 2010
Issue: 7438 / Categories: Opinion , Personal injury
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A skeleton in the cupboard

Many commentators have reflected that the trade in cases, especially those of accident victims, between lawyers and referrers is unseemly, if not downright dodgy.

Integrity, inherent dislike & embarrassment. Jon Robins revisits the referral fee conundrum

Many commentators have reflected that the trade in cases, especially those of accident victims, between lawyers and referrers is unseemly, if not downright dodgy. Just the mention of the old Claims Direct (Shames Direct, as The Sun would have it) and TAG, both now bust, will remind lawyers of the scandal of genuine accident victims left penniless after damages were consumed by sundry legal expenses.

Guilty without trial

The Mail on Sunday earlier this year ran a report about conveyancing solicitors paying estate agents “bribes” to get work leaving “ordinary consumers, who ultimately pay for it…being ripped off”. “This is no different from paying dodgy sheiks for arms contracts and it undermines the integrity of the profession,” one non-paying lawyer told the MoS. Slightly overstating the case possibly; but the payment of referral fees is a debate

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys—Maggie Kwok & George Weston

Harneys senior leadership appointments

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths—Keith Browne & Jim Jordan

Freeths strengthens London Construction and Engineering practice with two strategic senior hires

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins—Laura Moss

Anthony Collins announces strategic hire to deepen skills base in the social business sector

NEWS
Existing defamation law can respond to AI ‘hallucinations’, but allocating responsibility will prove harder where outputs reach users without human intervention
The High Court has upheld a rare successful serious-irregularity challenge after an arbitrator relied on an implied term neither party had advanced
Thirty years after The Future of Law shook a profession still using fax machines, its central forecast looks increasingly less like prophecy and more like description
More than 100 teams from the legal and financial services sectors competed in five sports at the 51st Law Society RFC Festival of Sport earlier this month
Part-time status need only be an effective cause of less favourable treatment, rather than the sole cause, the Supreme Court has held in Augustine v Data Cars
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