Whitehead: Expansion plans
There is “a political agenda at play” against volume consumer claims firms, the new owner and chairman of leading practice Barings Law has alleged.
Robert Whitehead acquired Barings last month from Craig Cooper, who has left the Manchester-based business, which has around 120 staff, as a result.
Mr Whitehead spent nearly 18 years as a litigation partner at Leeds firm Shulmans until 2017, and has had a series of roles since then, including spells as a partner at defendant firm Weightmans and fee-share practice Spencer West. He also set up WHD Broking.
He told Legal Futures that he had been in talks with Mr Cooper for six months about how to grow the business “and then circumstances led to an opportunity for me to step in and acquire all of Craig’s interest in the business”.
Knowing Barings Law – he has been involved with it on and off for a few years – “the opportunity was too good to pass up”, he said. “The firm’s got a huge potential.”
Indeed, the day after he took over, news of the Afghan data breach became public and Barings was able to reveal that it had been challenging the superinjunction [1] for many months.
This was an example of the cutting-edge work Barings did and the “brave” decisions it has taken, he said.
“Which other law firm has taken on the government in respect of the superinjunction? The newspapers can be expected to do that. They hold the government to account all the time, but no other law firm put its head above the parapet.”
Mr Whitehead was not concerned about some adverse press comment on the claims it is bringing as a result.
“The overarching message is one of protecting consumers’ interests, looking after those who’ve been the victims of data breach.” Despite how some media have framed it, this was not an immigration story, he stressed – indeed, Barings is now acting for UK service personnel too.
His plan is to broaden Barings’ offering into commercial litigation and property – but this will not be at the expense of the volume consumer claims work that has made its reputation, despite the increased focus on it from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the government in the wake of the collapse of SSB Law and others.
The SRA revealed recently that it had attended a roundtable briefing with the Ministry of Justice and other stakeholders “to discuss the issue of bulk claims with a view to identifying potential measures that could be taken to protect consumers against harmful practices in this area”.
Mr Whitehead insisted there was “a political agenda at play here”. He argued that the Access to Justice Act 1999 – which cut legal aid for consumer litigation – and changes to the Civil Procedure Rules encouraging parties to find cost-effective ways to bring cases, essentially created the modern volume claims law firm.
Put another way, the way law firms in this area operate is the only way to do it. “They [the government] may not like the outcome, but they’ve only got themselves to blame.”
While SSB and the others have cast a shadow over the sector, he argued that the whole market should not be tainted “by the conduct of one or two solicitors”.
Of course, it is more than that – the most recent SRA figures are that it has 89 live investigations into 73 law firms conducting high-volume claims work.
“Is it investigation or is it persecution?” Mr Whitehead asked. “Are they looking to get rid of all these firms as part of the political agenda or is it because of a desire to protect client’s interests?
“I know from my dealings with the SRA, they’re very much a political beast these days. Clients’ interests are paramount, but only when it suits and subject to holidays and availability and all the usual things that you have when you dealing with the quasi-governmental organisation…
“Regulators are effectively a creation of government to manage a profession or a sector. They’re all effectively instruments of government, whether expressly or impliedly. The very fact that the SRA met with the government to discuss it rather than met with the profession to discuss issues in the volume claims sector speaks volumes to me.”
Mr Whitehead acknowledged that there has been “some reprehensible conduct” and, while accepting that the SRA of course had an important role to play, suggested that interventions were not always in consumers’ best interests.
This was because some after-the-event insurers used the transfer of cases to another solicitor to pull the cover, leaving the clients unprotected against an adverse costs order.
“People who’ve behaved badly need to be held to account, they need to be removed from practice. But I think [the SRA] might need to find a better way to manage the ongoing conduct of those claims in a way that protects clients rather than put them at greater risk.”
Mr Whitehead was speaking before Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, which he described as “a major blow to consumer protection and a missed opportunity to address one of the financial sector’s most troubling practices”.
He noted that Barings had pioneered the use of omnibus claim forms to make bringing motor finance claims “affordable and accessible for everyday people” – following a High Court decision [2] which is heading for the Court of Appeal next year – but said the Supreme Court judgment “leaves many victims without a clear path to justice”.
He added: “Despite this setback, we remain committed to our clients and to fighting unfair financial practices wherever we find them. This ruling may slow things down, but it will not stop the movement toward greater transparency in the car finance industry.
“People deserve to know the true cost of the financial products they’re sold, and they deserve to be treated fairly.”