TO THE CERTAINTY of death and taxes can be added the take of lawyers’ fees. As a cursory look at the extensive litigation list of the Commercial Court shows, that all the major banks have actions in train, many seeking full payment of loans from developers and borrowers whose starry-eyed belief in the upwards-only value of property led to this impasse.

Of course the bankers were also starry-eyed, only too willing to lend on faulty projections, as now emerges. Which in turn provokes many counterclaims from developers and borrowers that the banks, by virtue of their “stated financial expertise”, were guilty of contributory negligence in their failure to project the degree of downturn.

Counterclaims amounting to professional negligence will be a feature of many cases before the courts.

Whatever the respective settlements, which will run to hundreds of millions, lawyers’ fees will be subtracted from the final amounts. Many of the top legal practices are busy hiring specific litigation expertise.

On top of this, Nama’s announced legal panel to process the billions of loans from banks will involve the most traditional of legal services – conveyancing. Property law is what most solicitors learn early in their careers. With a pot of around €2.6 billion to pay for such expertise, shared with valuers and accountants, one can see why lawyers will be smelling of roses, all the way to the banks for whom they are acting for – or against.