PETALING JAYA. The Bar Council is in the final stages of introducing a fee structure for personal and non-personal injury claims to prevent overcharging.
Its chairman, AG Kalidas, said personal injury claims were meant to cover motor vehicle and industrial accidents that resulted in death, bodily injuries, property damages and other losses.
“Non-personal injury cases cover all civil cases except family law-related matters, domestic violence and criminal cases,” he told FMT.
Kalidas said the proposed Legal Profession Conditional Fee rules were mooted by the council under Section 77 of the Legal Profession Act 1976.
He said litigants would have to pay a nominal retainer fee for personal injury cases, while for non-personal injury cases, it would be RM1,000, but not inclusive of agreed disbursement costs.
He said both lawyers and clients were bound by the criteria and terms set out and that a template agreement would be provided by the council through its website.
Kalidas said the council had submitted the proposed fee rules to the Attorney-General’s Chambers for fine-tuning and gazetting.
Meanwhile, the Bar Council’s immediate past president Salim Bashir said there was also a provision for payment of legal fees on a reduced percentage should personal injury claims be settled out of court.
For non-personal injury cases, he said, fees were subject to an agreement between the client and the lawyer.
“The rules are tailored to cover the entire litigation process based on client and solicitor agreement,” he said.
Lawyer Jeyaseelen Anthony said it was an open secret that practitioners collected legal fees based on a percentage of damages awarded by the court.
“This is illegal and there have been incidents where litigants had to part up to 40% of the claim,” he said, adding that lawyers also took costs into account, which were generally allowed.
He said any new guideline on how much they could charge based on percentage of the damages would be timely.
“Litigants must also be protected from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous people,” he said.
Anthony said the guideline should also state whether lawyers could claim back payment made for police reports and specialist medical reports advanced by them, over and above the costs they obtained if the matter did not go to trial.
“These reports could run up to a few thousand ringgit,” he said.
Lawyer Surdev Singh, meanwhile, said the council should obtain feedback from lawyers about the proposed rules before implementing it.