8. The implementation of the Access to Justice Act in 1999 led to the transition from legal aid[4] to a system of conditional “no profit, no royalties” rights for the financing of legal assistance and representation. The government indicated that its objective was to introduce the 1999 Act: from 1 April 2000, all old regulations were repealed to be replaced by new conditional pricing agreements and collective pricing agreements. For the first time, the success costs and the final insurance premium after the event were recovered by the other party, with a possible deficit between the amount requested and the amount recovered by the client. Suddenly, legal representatives of insurance companies (unlike customers) reviewed the agreements and tried to avoid having to pay. At the same time, legal aid was withdrawn from all common requests for assault and, in October of that year, the 1998 Human Rights Act was implemented. The essential feature of this system, as was the case before April 1, 2013, was that, if the case was successful, both the CFA success fee and the ATE premium could be recovered by the opponent. As Lord Justice Jackson recommended, this is no longer the case for the CFAs that were concluded on April 1, 2013 and the ATE guidelines have been finalized. A client has the right to terminate a contingency fee contract in the same way as any client contract, but, if he does, the legal representative generally has the right to be paid immediately in full. If your lawyer advises you that you don`t have a good chance, then you should talk to another lawyer before you do anything, and whatever you do, you should make it clear that if your current lawyers don`t want to continue, they terminate the agreement, not you. If the lawyer terminates the contract due to a lack of prospects, it is generally not payable. When the customer leaves him, it is the customer.
18 See written evidence from Associated Newspapers (Ev 109) and Guardian Newspapers (Ev 115) regarding the Turcu [2005] EWHC 799 QB case, in which Mr Justice Eady stated: “There must be a great temptation for media defendants to pay, to get rid of disputes for purely commercial reasons and without taking into account the true remuneration of a defence invoked. This is the so-called “chilling” or “ransom factor” effect inherent in the conditional pricing system. This is a situation that could not have happened in the past and is a very modern development” As of June 2, 2003, further regulatory changes have allowed lawyers to offer their clients an abbreviated agreement (known as the “CFA Lite”) guaranteeing the client all damages.