Alternate Dispute Financing and Legal Ethics: Free the Lawyers!
As is the case for many of our entitlements, our rights of action are protected by a less-than-full property rule. As a result, financing of litigation has been limited. The recent rise of alternate dispute financing has raised serious ethical problems. In this Article, I discuss those problems, dismiss some (but not all) of them, and suggest that pushing the protection of our entitlement to sue closer to a property rule might alleviate those problems that remain.
Lawyer Barons: What Their Contingency Fees Really Cost America
1. The origin of the contingency fee 2. How profitable are contingency fees? 3. Are contingency fee profits 'reasonable'? 4. How tort lawyers have increased their profits by restraining competition 5. Why the market has failed to correct the absence of price competition 6. Impediments imposed by the bar to price competition 7. The effects of incentives created by contingency fees 8. How the quest for profits influenced the development of the tort system 9. Lawyers' role in the expansion of tort liability 10. The role of the judiciary in tort system expansion 11. Current and future expansions of tort liability 12. The litigation explosion: 'fact or fiction'? 13. Measures of the rate of expansion of tort liability 14. The relationship between injury rates and tort system costs 15. The impacts of substantial increases in tort lawyers' effective hourly rates 16. Class actions 17. Fees in class actions 18. How class action lawyers game fee setting 19. Securities class actions 20. Regulation through litigation 21. A new role for punitive damages: policy-making as a profit center 22. For-profit partnerships between state attorneys general and contingency fee lawyers Appendix A. A critique of Alex Tabarrok, the problem of contingent fees for waiters Appendix B. Calculating tort lawyers' effective hourly rates in 1960 Appendix C. Electronic discovery and the use of contract lawyers Appendix D. The HMO litigation Appendix E. The GM 'side saddle' truck litigation: the (short lived) triumph of litigation over the regulatory process Appendix F. Modern class actions undermine democratic precepts Appendix G. Other ways lawyers game class action fees Appendix H. Non-recourse financing of tort litigation Appendix I. Political contributions by tort lawyers and the U.S. chamber of commerce Appendix J. Special rules favoring lawyers Appendix K. The ultimate medical expense 'build-up': whiplash Appendix L. The effect of punitive damages on compensatory awards.
Private nursing homes: Providing good value?
The well‐documented expansion in the supply of residential and nursing home care over the past decade has been fuelled by public funds. About half of the patients receiving care in private homes are receiving income support towards their fees. There is now growing concern that the substantial amounts involved should represent value for money.