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Notes -
To the extent that more expensive lawyers are actually better at winning cases, it reduces the role of raw monetary advantage in deciding who wins.
To the extent that the costs of defending a suit are comparable to the costs of prosecuting one, it reduces the effectiveness of intimidation suits.
A 'loser pays' system still allows the rich to apply significant stress simply by suing someone without the resources to mount a proper defense and in some situations would even doubly screw over the defense if they lose more due to weaker representation rather than by the merits of the case.
Loser pays doesn't prevent lawyers representing poor clients with strong cases working on contingency - in fact loser pays is complementary with contingency fees (called "conditional fees" in England) because the contingency only needs to cover the "uplift" over a regular fee to compensate the lawyer for the risk of not getting paid, whereas US-style contingency fees need to cover (in expectation) both the basic fee and the uplift.
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