Parliament

“Since the Statute of Westminster 1275 it has been inculcated into each generation of English lawyers as a tenet of professional ethics that contingency fees are not merely unlawful but, in the words of the judges, they are ‘inherently immoral’, ‘deeply corrupting’ and ‘definitely sinister’”, (Cook on Costs 3 ^rd edition page 386). In 1979 similar views were expressed by the Royal Commission on Legal Services, and in 1987 the Law Society added (that ‘the conflict of interest between solicitor and client is inherent in contingency fee arrangements … it would be impossible to overcome the ethical and consumer protection problems’. However, by 1989 the government in its green paper believed ‘that it is appropriate to consider the introduction in England and Wales of speculative actions on the Scottish model’ whilst the Law Society now wished ‘to seek an opportunity to remove the statutory bars on contingency fees’. The next year, s58 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 enacted that a ‘conditional fee agreement’ providing for an increase in fees in specified circumstances which complied with rules and regulations to be prescribed by the Lord Chancellor should ‘not be unenforceable by reason only of its being a conditional fee agreement’. It was not until July 1995 that the Conditional Fee Agreements Order and Regulations implemented s58 in respect of certain contentious business, which in 1995 was extended to all contentious business except criminal and family proceedings. There has never been any constraint against conducting non-contentious business on a contingency basis.