The price of justice - Professions challenged

Anyone who has been confounded by the cost of taking a court action will empathise with remarks made by Mr Justice Michael Peart at the weekend.

He confronted his colleagues in the legal professions about their image as “greedy ambulance chasers” and criticised inflexibility and delays in our court systems.

It is interesting that his views are shared, in part at least, by the EU/ECB/IMF troika administering the funds we depend on. Whether the change they, and Mr Justice Peart, seem to want eventually arrives can only be a matter for conjecture but history suggests that the legal profession’s instinct for self-preservation is a powerful force not easily cowed.