While flicking through a copy of Tacitus’s The Annals of Imperial Rome (as you do) I came across a reference to the ancient Cincian law forbidding the acceptance of money or gifts for legal services.
Lord Justice Jackson clearly missed a trick when making his proposals for controlling legal costs and it seems as though the introduction of Cincian law would have been the simple solution. (The Commercial and Admiralty Courts should obviously be exempt as excessive legal costs are not a problem there.)
I’m therefore going to launch an on-line petition calling for the introduction of Cincian law. I’m sure this is something that both claimant and defendant lawyers can unite behind and show the general public we are motivated by loftier ideals than simply making money.
You could make a proposal in the PODs!
being Roman, the pronunciation clearly is ‘chin chin’, which of course in English means goodbye – quite apt for Jackson to adopt really, but we’d have cottoned on to his agenda earlier if he’d been so obvious….
On a not dissimilar note I seem to recall from Suetonius’s “The Twelve Caesars” that the Emperor Nero, at the beginning of his reign introduced a regime of fixed costs for lawyers. Let’s hope that history does not repeat itself…………..