Why are legal costs so high?

I’ve uploaded an old article from April 2011 that originally appeared Litigation Funding magazine.  This was written in response to research commissioned by the National Accident Helpline that formed part of their response to the original Jackson consultation process.  At the time, an article based on this report appeared in the Law Society Gazette, written by the National Accident Helpline.  The thrust of that article (and the research) was to try to justify the continued recoverability of success fees and ATE premiums on the basis that the true cause of high legal costs was delay/unreasonable behaviour by defendant insurers as opposed to recoverable additional liabilities.  In fact, what the research seemed to show was that success fees and ATE premiums were set at excessive levels in light of the very high success rate of claims.  In the event, the research made no difference and the Jackson proposals were accepted.