Clifford Chance, Paris office. 1 Rue d'Astorg. Wikicommons/ Antonin garric. Some rights reserved.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the former Lord Chief Justice, has called on the Government to act over the widening gulf between huge earnings at City law firms and the funding of public sector legal advice. (The Times, 25 June 2018). In 2012 and 2016, Lord Justice Rupert Jackson, who recently retired at the age of 70, produced his blockbuster reports on litigation costs running to over 1200 pages. Yet his Herculean labours barely touched on the problem highlighted by Lord Thomas.
It would be unfair to blame Sir Rupert. His task was not to examine disparities in lawyers’ pay but to review the system which enables one party (usually the successful one) to recover from another some or all of the costs of litigation.
