The latest details to emerge in the miners’ compensation scandal rightly will prompt more outrage from the pitmen who have too often forfeited part of their compensation to solicitors. And it should prompt concern from taxpayers who have funded a disastrously inept scheme to recompense them for their suffering. The plight of miners should also bring urgency to the Law Society’s efforts to hold to account those who have exploited their injured clients. Those efforts have so far proved inadequate.

The scheme set up for miners with serious work-related ailments has left nearly 4,000 of them with less than £100 in compensation, while some solicitors have earned fees approaching £4,000 per claim. More than 27,000 miners received less than £499. One has been paid just £7. Claimants whose quality of life has been severely affected by pneumoconiosis have suffered more than others. A range of payments is to be expected. The creation of millionaire solicitors, from one publicly funded scheme, was not.

Of the £7 billion expected to be paid out, legal fees have consumed some £770 million already. That figure may reach £1.6 billion before all claims are settled. Seven hundred law firms have benefited, most within the letter if not the spirit of the law, while an unscrupulous minority has stretched the scheme’s legal framework to a point that should itself be the subject of disciplinary action where appropriate. The senior partner of one firm that established a mutually beneficial relationship with the Union of Democratic Mineworkers received £2.7 million between 2002 and 2004 alone.

The Serious Fraud Office is investigating allegations of fraud over the handling of miners’ claims by some of the firms involved. As for the Law Society, not one solicitor has yet appeared before its disciplinary tribunal. Next month, seven years after the society was first asked to look into its members’ conduct, that tribunal will finally convene the first hearings to result from its investigations.

There was nothing wrong in principle with outsourcing to the legal profession the task of representing miners claiming compensation. The alternative of a massive expansion of the legal aid scheme for this purpose would have cost even more. Nor should lawyers be prevented from commanding substantial fees for rendering complex specialist services at their own risk. But there is negligible risk in processing thousands of claims against the DTI when the vast bulk of cases are uncontested. And the only complexity in this lies in the ingenious components of what has been called “the mother of all gravy trains”.

The Law Society will decide whether any of those who have enriched themselves at miners’ and public expense are guilty of professional misconduct. Meanwhile, the Law Society should give clear guidance on how “no win, no fee” arrangements should be structured. It should establish transparent mechanisms to prevent the abuse of such well-meaning schemes. And it should do so at the expense of firms that have made millions from them.