It can hardly be surprising for those in the know to not be surprised that miners take a dim view of a lot of solicitors. It has been hard enough to get compensation but for a lot of miners the compensation they got was then eaten into by solicitor’s costs.

This is even more shocking if you read that the government paid the solicitors on behalf of the miners so the solicitors got paid twice.

Solicitors exploited miners with high charges and extras in fact the miners compensation has kept some solicitors in business. The law society has come down hard on solicitors it caught doing this.

Over a thousand complaints were given to the legal society and over 3.6 million pounds has been handed back. This sounds like a lot of money until you realise the law firms took their fees — even though the full legal costs of every successful claim was being met by the Department of Trade and Industry these fees were about 1.6 billion pounds for dealing with the payouts of 7.1 billion successful claims

The top three solicitor firms earnt more than 50 million pounds just dealing with the miners claims so the miner’s compensation claims were a very lucrative business indeed.

Many miners lost out with their compensation claims as they had large legal costs and many of the deductions arise from agreements made by the miners with claims-handling companies over which the society has no control

On average a successful claim for a miners against the said solicitors means an award of several hundred pounds so the solicitors have made a killing the interest alone they earnt is more than they have had to pay out . We decide whether the miner received poor service from the solicitor and, if so, the miner is likely to be awarded compensation, which could be greater or less than the deduction made by the solicitor from his compensation. Because of the unique circumstances of each claim, each case has to be assessed on its own merits. This all takes time and all this time the money is earning interest for the solicitors.

What is particularly sickening in this is that the miners had to fight and in a lot of cases die before they got their compensation so the solicitors that have made so much money from this are no better than vultures.