A WSJ letter writes to John Edwards, suggesting that lawyers fees be unlinked to malpractice verdicts:
The most irrational form of inequality of pay is a lawyer sucking up a 25%-33% contingency fee from a claim. It seems that in many cases, lawyers benefit more than the affected people. This is a terrible example of inequality of pay . . . An additional benefit of this proposal is that health care and court costs may decline as the more frivolous lawsuits are settled earlier and at a lower cost (and hopefully out of court) once lawyer compensation is not linked to the result of the lawsuit.
Brilliant.
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{ 5 comments }
Yes, in the interest of consumers, massive cost controls on lawyers are required. How about a 10.1% across the board cut in all lawyer income this year?
Tell you what, we’ll postpone it to June 30. (Productive people will get my sarcasm, lawyers will not)
Ed Sodaro MD
We could also ban treating on a lien in order to remove the potential for providers peddling their junk science clinical causation claims in PI and toxic tort cases (seeing as how we are so worried about the legal system).
What a great idea – let’s limit what one side can pay their lawyer. And let’s not have it be the side with the deepest pockets.
Yeah, that sounds fair.
” as the more frivolous lawsuits are settled earlier and at a lower cost (and hopefully out of court)”
So this guy’s theory is that knowing that the other side’s lawyers are getting paid even less that insurers are going to be MORE willing to settle “frivolous” claims?
That doesn’t make much sense, which is in keeping with tort “reformer” logic, I guess.
Thsi little snippet was not a complete representation of my letter or the Edwards article to which I was responding.
Edwards said that corporate executive compensation is excessive. I said he should start by looking at class-action lawyers making millions of dollars. My cap in the article was actually $750,000 a year.
My premise was in the fact that Edwards implied that CEOs should be paid a fair wage for their work rather than comp based on profitability, options or other items that tend to inflate compensation for the highest paid CEOs.
Full Letter:
I agree with John Edwards (”My Plan to Stop Corporate Abuses,” Editorials & Opinion, Jan. 3) that there are problems in the United States with health care and with inequality of pay. I have a recommendation that may not solve all problems, but that will address some major ones: Place a cap on lawyer compensation.
The most irrational form of inequality of pay is a lawyer sucking up a 25%-33% contingency fee from a claim. It seems that in many cases, lawyers benefit more than the affected people. This is a terrible example of inequality of pay. After all, the compensation of most CEOs is much less than 25%-33% of the profits of the companies they run.
I propose that John Edwards write another piece in the Journal with his proposal on how to curb this “legal abuse.” He should consider starting with a “fair reward for work.” Based on this principle, I think that he should propose limiting the compensation of trial lawyers — I would consider setting that limit to a maximum of $300 per hour, not to exceed $750,000 a year (this is calculated as $300 times 50 hours a week times 50 weeks a year). That’s between 15 and 20 times what an average worker makes — and it seems to be fair in the context of closing the inequality of pay.
An additional benefit of this proposal is that health-care and court costs may decline as the more frivolous lawsuits are settled earlier and at a lower cost (and hopefully out of court) once lawyer compensation is not linked to the result of the lawsuit. I look forward to hearing Mr. Edwards’s views — and those of his major financial backers — on this proposal.
Adrian Gulich
Teaneck, New Jersey
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