Oh Please!!!
I'd be more amenable to this defence of outrageous fees if that hourly rate really did encompass all their business expenses... when you get a bill that includes photocopying at 65c a sheet and $10 for the phone call where you left a message for the solicitor to call you back (and he charged for the time spent on the call back)..
The legal profession has run riot with their fees in the past 50 years.. when a marriage breakdown occurs or a dispute between business partners arise these greedy, money grabbing monsters cackle in delight and sharpen their pencils in anticipation of the exorbitant billing they can undertake... and worst still they seem to encourage courses of action that INCREASE the conflict between disputing parties.. they giggle and black-slap each other in delight when that OH SO THREATENING and clever letter they sent to "the other party" results in that individual engaging a solicitor for themselves.. the feeding frenzy is on, like sharks gorging themselves on a bloated whale carcass the solicitors swim about in an orgy of expenses and billable hours. Swilling chardonnay over lunch and swapping tales of "divorces from hell" etc they pat each other on the back and swap grandiloquent compliments on "how that legal wig and robe makes you look so handsome!"
As a society, it disappoints me that our legal system has become the carefree plaything of the legal profession. It would please me greatly if the whole profession was dumped and each person who found cause to be involved in the legal system was provided with a government appointed and funded “advocate” to guide them.
What an utterly loathsome, disgusting, dry-retch invoking, smelly, horrid profession, they sicken me.. horrible, greedy, nauseating profession.. hate them.