Divorce lawyers 'steer couples to court for profit'

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Edward Leigh: Concerns

Lawyers are cynically steering divorcing couples away from cheap mediation sessions and into costly court battles to boost their fees, an official report claims.

With four out of five divorces ending up before a judge, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being squandered on legal aid, according to the National Audit Office.

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Many cases could have been settled far quicker and with less animosity if lawyers had not kept their clients in the dark about the mediation option, it is said.

The spending watchdog calls for an urgent investigation into solicitors who fail to keep enough cases out of the courtroom, and says they should be stripped of legal aid contracts unless they have a convincing excuse.

Critics last night accused 'fatcat lawyers' of exploiting emotionally stressed divorce clients to turn a fast buck and pointed out they are under a legal obligation to suggest mediation.

The chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, urged a crackdown on lawyers who are 'happy to jump straight into the court room, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the bill'.

Leading solicitors acknowledged that sharp practices existed, but claimed only a small minority of lawyers were at fault and insisted mediation would be futile in many of the 150,000 divorces in England and Wales each year.

Last year divorce cases swallowed some £328 million of the legal aid budget, up from £320 million the previous year.

Whenever legal aid is involved solicitors are obliged to offer clients the option of mediation. But the NAO report found a third of such divorcees had never heard of mediation.

Of those, almost half said they would have given the process a go had they known. Their cases alone would have saved the taxpayer £10 million.

The sessions offer divorcing couples a chance to sit down with a trained mediator to hammer out a financial deal and agreements on child custody. Some 60 per cent of attempts are successful.

The couple still each receive legal advice from a solicitor but, without court hearings, the process is far quicker and cheaper - taking an average three-and-a-half months to settle and costing £752 in legal aid, compared with 14 months and £1,682 for court cases.

And although mediation is often still stressful, research since the 1980s, when it first became widespread, shows agreements are less acrimonious and work better in the long term, particularly for children.

In parts of the US mediation is compulsory for all divorces, while in Sweden 90 per cent of cases are resolved outside courts.

The NAO report says far more British divorce cases should be settled this way.

Excluding divorces involving violence or abuse, where mediation is usually impossible, the watchdog found that out of 150,000 legal aid cases over an 18-month period only 30,000 - one in five - attempted mediation, while the majority went straight to court.

The report highlighted the 'financial disincentive to solicitors of advising people about mediation', adding: 'If a case is settled out of court, this will result in a loss of potential fees for them.'

The report follows years of accusations that lawyers deliberately spin-out divorce cases and fuel disagreements to maximise their fees.

One case involving a Derby businessman and his wife - dubbed the War of the Roses after a Hollywood movie - finally settled in the High Court in 2004 after swallowing £570,000 in legal bills, more than half the couple's assets. A judge described the fees as 'shockingly disproportionate'.

Martin Mears, former president of the Law Society and now a practising solicitor, said: "Of course there's a minority of oldfashioned solicitors who make their money from fomenting disagreements.

"Everyone knows there are some, but I think it's a very small number. It's hard to identify such cases."

Resolution, formerly the Solicitors Family Law Association, rejected the NAO's accusations, claiming its 5,000 members did everything they could to encourage mediation and other 'alternative ways of resolving disputes' wherever possible.

 

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