Anyone know of a ...

[Joel Bernstein]

On 22 Oct 2009, at 14:46, Ash Berlin wrote:
<snip request for lawyer recommendation>

There are many lawyers who specialise in litigation, and plenty of  
those work on a no-win-no-fee basis. However, it's important to  
understand how no-win-no-fee works in practice.

Essentially the fee is doubled on success, and that fee is payable by  
the _client_, i.e. your friend. Generally, if successful, the judge  
makes a court order requiring the defendant to pay (at least most of)  
the plaintiff's legal fees. But if you're talking about sueing a  
company that is near insolvency, which could be disastrous - your  
friend will double his fee obligation and be unable to reclaim it from  
the company, so will be liable for it himself. His mileage may vary,  
but he's unlikely to obtain legal representation on the basis of the  
fee being limited to what is recoverable, and he's unlikely to want to  
make up the (possibly considerable) shortfall.

How much is he actually owed? It seems a better course of action to  
ensure that a really good insolvency practitioner is appointed. They  
will pursue the directors of the company far more effectively than he  
can, and will have the use of the balance of the company's funds in  
order to do that.

IANAL and can't comment on the limited liability issue. But nor can  
you, and predicating the expense of legal representation on your  
opinion being correct has the potential to be very costly to your  
friend. If the company needs to be declared insolvent, do that.

HTH,
/joel