Nearly Legal accused Geeklawyer of being expensive and posted an interesting link to a Times Online article by none other than Professor Sir Hugh Laddie ex-IP judge and mauler of Graceland (nice job on that one BTW Hugh).
The gist being that IP litigation in the UK was much more expensive in the UK than Europe with only 12 patents cases being litigated to completion in contrast to 500 in Germany. Chief culprit was civil procedure rules such as discovery and lengthy examinations. IP lawyers were not, contrary to Nearly Legal’s view the primary cost cause as such but rather the process & structure of litigation. While Geeklawyer thinks that our rigorous evidence and oral examination procedures are right from a thoroughness angle, Laddie is right to say that justice that for the rich only is not justice.
Geeklawyer takes some comfort that, since the removal of civil legal aid for practically everything, at least Neo-labour isn’t inflicting block tendering and all that tosh on us is he is on poor Ruthie and her benighted criminal colleagues. There may well be a case for another Woolf type review: but can we avoid idiotic crap like renaming the participants and dropping Latin if that is done?
Heh. I had read the article, but thought that the best way to get geeklawyer to read something was to suggest it insulted him or threatened his life style as a voluptuary.
That said, the article suggested that cost of disclosure was supplemented by the costs of “lengthy cross-examination and oral argument” (encouraged by the mountains of disclosure). J’accuse
You’re not wrong about the LSC. We poor civil legal aid sewer rats suffer enforced cheapness, with some serious remedies. I hit £25K costs on a £200K claim and the LSC killed my grandmother.
By the way, your link to the times article points to my blog. Grateful for the potential traffic but…
Damn. Am I really that easy to manipulated? I’m just too sweet & trusting - probably explains why Ruthie rules me.
Spot on. She does. So when does the blog name change to Ruthie & her Geeklawyer Biatche?
On occasions when I row with Geeklawyer I’m very tempted to take my ball away and set up a Ruthielawyer blog. But I must concede through gritted teeth that it would probably be less entertaining than this one. So whilst I recognise my actual position of superiority, i like to keep it to myself, and allow Geeklawyer to continue to delude himself that he is the reason for this blog’s success.
Still I’m delighted to see that I now have an official fanclub. Whilst personally I find it hard to take myself that seriously, I do think the fanclub is to be encouraged because it irritates the hell out of Geeklawyer. So, fanboy, I’m giving you the honour of being the first official member of the Ruthie fanclub.
Readers should be aware that the lack off Ruthie posts over the last week is nothing to do with Ruthie’s workload. Ruthie has been on posting strike.
After the conference, Geeklawyer had a fit of pique when the full extent of Ruthie’s popularity was revealed and decided to reduce her posting rights by one level. This meant she could not longer post directly onto the blog, but her posts would have to been reviewed by Geeklawyer.
After some discussion about this issue, it became clear that the problem was nothing to do with the quality of Ruthie’s posts and everything to do with Geeklawyer’s ego and a desire to remind Ruthie who *is* boss.
ACAS has been called in, and I’m confident that a negotiated settlement will be arrived at shortly.
P.S. To Dan: this is why I haven’t been able to correct your spelling error as requested yet.
Re: Ruthie fan club. I will set up something on my space shortly.
But what the fanclub really needs is a Ruthie website…
Myspace is an irredeemably naff place: loud garish and uncouth. Your perfect hangout, a place to reside with your fan club, i.e. alone.
And If I didn’t know you better I’d imagine you were posting while drunk!
Posting rights duly restored Ruthie will now concede that Geeklawyer may have a point about MySpace. It’s owned by Murdoch which is a good reason not to use it.
Having had a look I’ve come to the conclusion that I probably have no need to the use of social networking site since I have friends that I can email or phone if I want to contact them.
Whilst the appeal of global domination via the Ruthie fanclub is huge, I’ve come to the conclusion I’d rather keep my fanclub as a small but elite group, and just to chat to you all on here..
xxx
Expensive = “good”. Inexpensive = “bad”. “Expensive” keeps riff-raff away. (Was that a haiku…?)
I’m not sure it’s that simple: pricing follows your business model. For a boutique firm like Hull-McGuire low client numbers and high margins (with concomitant client care as an inevitable corollary) are a good approach, but for other legal sectors & client profiles alternative models may work better. It may be more profitable to take punters in on a conveyor belt, stamp out cookie cutter service, take the low profit margin fee but do so on large volumes: some UK criminal legal-aid practices work like that & I’m sure there must be an equivalent in the US.
Just don’t confuse those business models