THIS IS A BRILLIANT IDEA

The Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2010

These draft regulations should hopefully come into force next year. For reasons that pass all understanding contingency fee agreements (the sort of thing that New York Plaintiff attorneys use to extract payment for their services by way of a percentage of the damages recovered) have been lawful in employment tribunal proceedings notwithstanding that they are very much unlawful in normal civil litigation. It was something to do with the fantasy of employment tribunal proceedings being classified as non-contentious business. Anyway MOJ is going to regulate these agreements - most importantly putting a cap on the percentage that can be stolen from the compensation as costs by the representative - 25%. See http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/docs/damages-based-agreements-regulations.pdf for more info.