35 So far, her model has proven popular.


Having started as a one-woman band at launch, the firm now employs 11 people and has worked with more than 100 clients. ‘Given I was going it alone, I knew that


charging fixed fees would be a way of standing out from the crowd,’ says Hamblin. ‘Fixed fees have allowed me to grow the business very rapidly.’ The hourly rate, she adds, is ‘clearly becoming completely uneconomical for clients’. Not everyone agrees, however. Hamblin’s


former employer, Vardags, is among those to take issue with her hypothesis. The firm, which was launched by Ayesha Vardag in 2005, has become one of the go-to practices for the very rich. The founder, for example, who charges £1,200 per hour for her services, worked for beauty queen Pauline Chai when, in 2017, she was awarded a £64 million settlement in her split from ex-husband Khoo Kay Peng, the Malaysian-Chinese businessman in charge of a multimillion-pound business empire that included high street chain Laura Ashley. The payout followed a ‘titanic’ legal battle in which the judge noted: ‘The actual resolution of the finances of this couple, who have more money between them than they could spend in their lifetimes, has unfortunately


taken a second seat.’ Vardags managing partner Emma Gill


tells Spear’s: ‘You have to remember that fixed fees don’t mean cheaper fees – they only mean that there is more certainty over the amount paid. A lot of people seem to misunderstand that, which could be a big mistake and come at their great expense. ‘Proportionality is the watchword. Sometimes the costs may be high but the money at stake is far, far higher. The bigger public menace in my view are law firms doing work that they are not capable of doing.’ But it is not just solicitors who are accused of leaving the clocks running, as Hamblin puts it. Fingers have also been pointed at barristers for encouraging the spike in costs. It was difficult to get a barrister to discuss fees on the record for this article, but one former family advocate told Spear’s that solicitors, rather than barristers, were to blame: ‘My experience is that solicitors have made hay and barristers have not. In fact, the rates for barristers are still almost the same as when I stopped working more than 10 years ago.’ Another barrister, who still practises,


adds: ‘Like any sector where highly specialised knowledge and experience is required, there will be fewer people in a


Greed, it seems, has taken over.


Justice becomes meaningless if people can’t afford it


position to deliver that knowledge and experience. It therefore becomes more about providing the best value to a client than simply the cost.’ Mostyn, however, is not so sure. He has


little doubt the system is set up for cases to be dragged on and for costs to mount up. Value, he believes, has become hard to find. He references another case he presided


over just before he retired in 2023, in which he described the charges as ‘apocalyptic’. In that case, Lazaros Xanthopoulos, a Greek-born Russia resident, who described himself as a homemaker, and his former wife, Alla Rakshina, who was described in court as the 75th richest woman in Russia with interests worth more than £300 million, fought over two London properties worth £5 million each and a sum of £11 million in a Coutts bank account. The legal costs, meanwhile, were on track to hit £8 million in order to settle the dispute. Mostyn said in his judgment: ‘It was difficult to know what to say or do when confronted with such extraordinary, self-harming conduct […] Figures like this are hard to accept even in a conflict between the über-rich […] In my opinion, the Lord Chancellor should consider whether statutory measures could be introduced, which limit the scale and rate of costs run up in these cases.’ Again, those pleas went unheard, with costs continuing to swell. For Vardags’ Gill, a lack of what you


The legal fees mounted up in the 2017 divorce of Malaysian-Chinese businessman Khoo Kay Peng and Pauline Chai, who (with Vardags’ help) was awarded a £64 million settlement


might call ‘market interference’ is welcome. In her view, clients should be free to spend what they like on the provider of their choice: ‘You get what you pay for. Some of us shop at M&S and some of us shop at Harrods. We live in a liberal democracy where people can spend their money as they wish.’


ALAMY


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