Here, here!
Although at $1000 an hour, I might be more willing to suffer for a little while longer.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]
On another note, in case anyone needs to retain legal counsel in the UK and doesn’t want to pay US$1,000/hour, I’ve found a solution: don’t hire a London lawyer. I’ve since consulted with various law firms in Birmingham and found there are many competent lawyers there who will work for 1/2 the price of London lawyers, or less.[/quote]
I was about to reply and suggest the same thing… London?! What the hell were you thinking?! 
My company uses Morecroft Urquhart in Liverpool who charge anything from GBP85-135+ per hour. They don’t arse around and over the years they’ve recovered ten times the amount I’ve paid them in debts and payment disputes. We started out with firms charging twice the price with incompetence FOC, tried out these guys after a recommendation and never looked back.
Further proof that unless you’re a rich prick, London sucks.
Think everything’s cheap in China? Think again.
I just got an email from the Shanghai office of a large US law firm. Sure, they’ll be happy to assist us. The three lawyers who would handle the case charge US$625, $575 and $325 per hour.
That’ll buy a lot of bien dangs and pearl milk teas.
market forces, gentlemen. With lawyer fees, the market forces you to pay through the nose by collusion.
Yeah, careful of the cheaper ones you get stuck with when you use a big firm. Even their price is lower per hour they do waste your time. I had a rookie for 500 US an hour who was supposedly fluent in Chinese spend 3 hours to translate about 10 words at the top of a spreadsheet. These were no classical literature words. It was like account, deposit etc.