February 11, 2026 at 05:55 AM By Seema Kennedy
Seema Kennedy, head of the campaign group Fair Civil Justice, argues that the legal profession has to rethink its approach to ethics.
I trained as a lawyer more than 25 years ago at one of the country’s leading law firms. Ethics
were the foundation to practice. We were taught that the privilege of advising clients and
appearing before the courts carried duties to the client, the court and the system of justice
itself. Professional reputation mattered, collectively as much as individually.
I remain proud of the English legal profession. But caring about it means being honest when
parts of the system are failing. In recent years, those failures have become harder to dismiss as
isolated lapses. They point instead to structural weaknesses in how conduct is incentivised and
how the public is protected when things go wrong.
At the campaign which I lead – Fair Civil Justice—we see the consequences daily. Scores of
people write to us seeking advice because they believe they have been badly let down by
lawyers: mis-sold claims, opaque funding arrangements, unexpected liabilities or firms
collapsing mid-litigation. These are not sophisticated speculators.
They are ordinary individuals who relied on professional assurances and assumed the system would protect them.
Other high-profile cases in recent years have brought these concerns into sharper focus. In one
major commercial case, Mr Justice Waksman described conduct by a senior City solicitor as
“extremely serious” and “almost unimaginable in the case of a straightforward competent
solicitor”. The court found that unauthorised leaks were instigated, that engagement with
authorities took place without proper client authority, and that actions were taken which were
“plainly against [the client’s] interests”. These were not matters of hindsight or fine professional
judgment; they were clear breaches of duty identified by a High Court judge.
Cases such as this matter not only because of the harm to individual clients, but because of
what they signal. The reputation of the English courts and of English law more broadly is
something to be actively defended. It has been earned over many hundreds of years, not by
coincidence or happenstance, but through ethical, transparent conduct by those who operate
within the system. Unethical behaviour and rule-breaking, particularly when left insufficiently
checked, pose a serious threat to that reputation, and one that would not be easily recovered if
tarnished.
It is right that such conduct is scrutinised. But the more uncomfortable question is what
happens next. When the financial consequences of even the most serious professional failures
are largely absorbed by professional indemnity insurance, we should ask whether the current
framework sufficiently reinforces ethical discipline.
Professional indemnity insurance is essential. It protects clients when genuine mistakes are
made and underpins confidence in the profession. But when indemnity functions as an almost
absolute backstop, including in egregious cases, it risks dulling incentives for care,
independence and restraint. Risk is displaced, not reduced.
The human cost of this is clearest outside headline litigation. The cavity wall insulation scandal
is a sobering example. Thousands of homeowners were encouraged to pursue claims through
aggressive marketing promising “no win, no fee” redress and minimal risk. When firms such as
SSB Law and Pure Legal collapsed, many discovered too late that the after-the-event insurance
they were told would protect them did not respond. Legal bills ran into tens of thousands of
pounds, sometimes exceeding the value of their homes.
These people did nothing reckless. They followed advice and trusted a system that appeared to
endorse the model. When it failed, there was no meaningful safety net.
This sits within a wider pattern. Claims management companies have become more prominent.
Lines between introducers, funders and law firms have blurred. Litigation funding and
conditional fee arrangements are marketed as consumer products rather than professional
services with serious consequences. “No win, no fee” has become a slogan, often stripped of
proper explanation of risk. That is why we are calling for a ban of the term.
None of this is an argument against litigation funding or conditional fees per se. Used properly,
they expand access to justice. But scale matters, and incentives matter. When business models
are built on volume and delegation, and when downside risk is routinely externalised through
insurance, ethical judgment can erode.
Professional indemnity insurers are not passive actors in this ecosystem. They see patterns of
claims, conduct and failure across firms and practice areas. There is a strong case for insurers
playing a more active role in shaping behaviour through underwriting standards, scrutiny of
business models and clearer limits on what is insurable.
At Fair Civil Justice, we are calling for tighter rules around litigation funding, greater
transparency for consumers, and stronger safeguards to protect Britain’s economy, courts and
consumers from systemic litigation risk. That includes clearer accountability across the chain
of funders, introducers and advisers, and reforms that ensure risks are properly understood and
fairly allocated.
The English legal profession is not broken. But it is under strain. Trust, once lost, is slow to
rebuild. Reform should not be seen as hostility to the profession, but as stewardship of it. Ethics cannot
simply be insured into existence. A profession that prides itself on judgment must ensure that
judgment is rewarded, not quietly undermined by structures that insulate failure.
If we want to defend the reputation of English law, we must be willing to fix what is no longer
working.
