Jim Diamond, who has assessed legal costs for 35 years, said that the current system which enables clients to challenge their bills was not fit for purpose because those accused of excessive billing could simply refuse to take part in a mediation process.
And he insisted that the situation was being aggravated because the Jersey Law Society, which runs a costs-review procedure locally, was closing ranks with others in the profession by preventing experts like him from assisting Islanders who believed they had been grossly overcharged.
Clients who feel that they have been asked to pay too much can ask the society for a review. However, the law firm about which the complaint is made can veto any investigation and opt out of having their fees reviewed.
Mr Diamond, who offered to review some of the legal costs of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry for free, described the situation as ‘mad’.
He was seeking to represent a client charged £1,015 a hour when he was told that he had ‘no status’ in the process and could not attend meetings to argue the case.
He says that he was ‘frozen out’ after asking to meet both representatives of the Law Society and the lawyer who issued the bill.
The JEP has been shown a copy of the bill in question, which clearly shows that the hourly figure charged was £1,015.16 – or £17 a minute. The bill, for example, says that the advocate spent six minutes on ‘email exchanges with client’, something which was billed at £101.52.
Neville Benbow, the chief executive of the Jersey Law Society, said that clients could ask for the charges to be examined by an independent review board, but that third parties did not need to be engaged for a review to take place.
He added that suggestions that law firms charged more than £1,000 an hour was ‘totally incorrect’.
Mr Diamond said: ‘Jersey does not have a Solicitor’s Act-type procedure which allows a client to raise issues and go straight to the relevant costs court for an independent assessment.
‘Jersey needs to have something like this so clients don’t have this mad issue of someone having to consent to the mediation process.
‘I have major concerns whether the structure of the Law Society and the mediation process is right.’
Mr Diamond said that ‘self-regulation’ within the industry was not working and that he was shocked when his requests for meetings were refused.
He added: ‘I asked for a face-to-face meeting to explain the bill.
‘I don’t take cases forward if I don’t think they are substantial. If I ask for a meeting, it is because I want them to break it down and explain.’
Mr Benbow said that there were other avenues that clients could explore and that law was one of the only professions in which clients could dispute costs through a mediation process.
He said: ‘The Law Society can’t force a firm to agree to fee adjudication.
‘If they do, we [agree] to undertake an independent assessment and the result of that review is binding.’
He added that sometimes costs did exceed initial estimates, but that clients were told of potential changes to the cost at regular intervals throughout the process and were asked whether they wished to proceed.
He said that law firms might take a client to court over non-payment of fees and concerns over the amount charged could be raised at that point.
‘There is an extra opportunity when it comes to legal fees through the option of adjudication. That isn’t available in relation to any other profession,’ Mr Benbow said.
