LAWYERS' BILLS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1162, 7 March 1874, Page 11

LAWYERS' BILLS.

(The Gropitic.) • It is a pleasant thing to be reminded on the authority of a legal journal that the old-fashioned lawyer's bill which tortured the client by taking him. through, endless details of letters, attendances, drafts, instructions to sue, and what not, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It is true that the substantial fact that the law is an expensive indulgence, and must be paid for accordingly, still remains, but it is a good maxim that where punishment is inevitable it is well to get it over as quickly as possible, and hence, perhaps, the growing custom of assimilating bills of costs to fashionable doctors' bills, and give us something approaching to a lump sum for the services rendered. It is probably too much to hope that the legal profession will ever go a step further and establish in law that free trade which tho lawyers are already agreed ia a wholesome and proper thing in every other avocation but their own. It is notorious that there are a great many attorneys who have little or no connexion, and who would be glad to accept business on very much lower terms than the tariff of Dax's "Book of Costs," or fche legalised scale of the Master's office. Professional etiquette, however, which appears to be a sort of refined trades unionism, prescribes absolute idleness rather than reduction of fees ; and it is perhaps doubtful whether an agreement to do business at reduced charges could be maintained against the legal practitioner. All this seems to the lay mind to be somewhat opposed to the public interest, it is evident that it can only be favourable to the interests of a fraction of the profession. It is difficult to sco what sound objection there could be to an attorney undertaking a given business for a fixod sum, or giving a client a guarantee that expenses shall not exceed a certain limit.