'Slow, ignorant' lawyers charge by the hour to inflate bills, says leading judge

 
“Malign” effect: Lord Neuberger said hourly rates encouraged inefficiency
PA

Britain's top judge has warned that “slow and ignorant” lawyers are using hourly charging rates to unjustly inflate their bills as he called for an overhaul of legal fees to reduce the sums paid by the public.

Lord Neuberger, the president of the Supreme Court, said the use of hourly rates encouraged “inefficiency or worse” and was having a “malign” impact, with some lawyers stringing out work to a “surprising” extent.

He also warned that lawyers had become “far more commercially minded and profit-orientated” in recent decades, but insisted that all those working in the justice system had an “overriding” public duty to ensure that “cheap and speedy” legal advice was provided.

Lord Neuberger’s comments are likely to prompt a fierce debate both within and without the legal profession and raise questions about the level of charges demanded by some of London’s leading lawyers.

Hourly rates for partners in the capital’s five “Magic Circle” law firms are estimated to average as much as £700, with some charging far more, while a recent survey of leading divorce lawyers put their average fee at just under £500 an hour.

Lord Neuberger suggested that the system needed reforming to keep bills to a minimum and ensure that fees properly reflected the value of the work done by lawyers.

He added: “Where the service is legal advice or representation, there is a public interest in keeping the charge as low as possible. In this connection, the centrality of the hourly rate appears to me to be malign.

“As a matter of principle, it confuses cost with value. It encourages inefficiency or worse: if a lawyer is short of work, it can be surprising how much time a particular task takes. The hourly rate rewards the slow and the ignorant lawyer at the expense of the speedy and knowledgeable lawyer.”

Lord Neuberger, who was speaking during a lecture in London at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said that controlling costs would help ensure public access to justice.

He added: “It is not only the Government which has a duty to ensure that all citizens have genuine access to justice. There is just as much of a duty in this connection on the members of the legal profession and the judiciary.

“Judges, practitioners and rule makers have an overriding duty to ensure that legal advice and litigation are as cheap and speedy as is consistent with justice.”

The judge’s comments follow recommendations by Lord Justice Jackson in a 2010 report on civil litigation that a “costs council” should be established to recommend appropriate charging levels. A committee has since been set up by the judiciary to carry out this task.

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