Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1901 — LEGAL REMUNERATION. [ARTICLE]

LEGAL REMUNERATION.

Bone ThJpk it Radical Reform in TUa * Matter Desirable. The mode of legal remuneration has always been the ml stumbling block in the way of solid reforjg. It need not be, if lawyers will condescend to deal with the matter upon a commercial basis. Ever since they got the upper hand in this country, says the Nineteenth Century, the length of the proceedings has unfortunately been the chief test in our system. A disadvantageous and mischievous plan! Why, indeed, the length and not the subject of dispute? The principle is impolitic and unsound at the bottom; it is the causeof. our present unhealthy condition of affairs. Added to this, we get a procedure that unwisely offers to the weak and unscrupulous all kinds of excuses of a plausible nature for increasing the number of and prolonging attendances, multiplying documents and copies and stretching out the content*. Time and money »are wasted on work that is useless; expedition is lost sight of, and in this manner attention is diverted from the actual question in dispute. The revenue authorities, as a consequence, have been drawn into the mistake of setting the court fees on a similar illusory footing. The engineer, the architect, the auctioneer, the estate agent, are paid-according to the value of the matter they have to deal with. So also the remuneration of the lawyer should be tested by the nature of the task to be done, and not the length to which he may be able to extend it. Given the simplified practice, there should be a carefully prepared sliding scale of costs regulated strictly by the amount in dispute, and in certain cases by the difficulty of the question at issue. This work will encourage zealous assiduity and good work in the true direction. There are reasons 1 equally cogent in favor of providing 1 remuneration upon a similar basis when a solicitor settles an action. Under the present scale, if he exercises the great skill required to do this, he is often at a loss.