Legal costs - Urgent need for reform in legal service

After five-and-a-half years the Competition Authority has produced a report which basically said that the legal profession is in need of fundamental reform, a fact which is neither surprising nor illuminating.

In fact, the Authority published a preliminary report last year which said the profession was “permeated with serious and disproportionate restrictions on competition.”

It said exactly the same in the report published yesterday, which begs the question why the necessity to repeat itself, especially when it is virtually powerless to implement any of the changes it proposes.