Independent Law journalists report on legal news for consumers, litigants & Scotland's legal community including features on justice, access to justice, law reform, the judiciary, politics & in-depth investigations, analysis and commentaries on legal related issues.
Law Society of Scotland, promoter of the profession, not honesty & high standards of service.IF YOU have recently received a bill from your lawyer, it may well be wise to cast a more than cautionary eye over amounts being demanded from you, as the chances are there is some expensive, yet non existent & fabricated work included in the sums demanded by the same solicitor who once told you the issue requiring the work of a qualified legal practitioner would not pose any difficulty or extreme cost to resolve.
An on going investigation by Diary of Injustice into fees demanded by Scottish law firms has so far revealed a significant number of solicitors bills brought to our attention which have been further looked into and queried both by clients and journalists, contain what can only be described as false charges for legal work which has never taken place.
Journalists have been able to establish that in all of the cases of disputed fee demands presented to Diary of Injustice regarding queries over the key area of "Counsel's Opinions", most of the solicitors failed (many refused) to produce any justification for obtaining a Counsels Opinion and all but one of the solicitors failed (again, many refused) to even produce an actual copy of the Counsel's Opinion to the client to justify claims for expenditures of up to £3,800 a time on alleged fees due to advocates.
In the sole case where, after six requests from the client to do so, the solicitor who was demanding £2,600 for a 'Counsel's Opinion', produced an incomplete, 'partial copy' of a Junior Counsel's opinion, along with an alleged copy of a cover note from the advocate named in the opinion, further enquiries revealed the advocate who supposedly wrote the opinion was, at the time, on extended leave after recovering from an alcohol related illness and had not been working for six months.
The advocate in the above case, has since admitted to journalists he was never contacted by the solicitor representing the client in a bitter boundary dispute so far lasting six years which has cost the client upwards of seventeen thousand pounds. The inescapable conclusion on this case is that clearly, the solicitor faked the advocate's opinion in order to fraudulently demand fees from his client.
As the antics of profit hungry, increasingly desperate Scots law firms to squeeze every penny out of their already impoverished clients shows, the imagination of solicitors to charge for non existent work is not limited to phantom 'Counsel's Opinions', with bills sent by both large city law firms and small High Street solicitors to clients on a variety of issues such as property transactions, divorce, wills & estates of deceased clients to complicated financial arrangements, commonly contain charges for items such as :
Non existent meetings between solicitors & clients,
Property & title searches, charged for, yet never carried out,
Letters to clients with 'important documents' supposedly "lost in the post",
Court appearances in Sheriff Courts and even Scotland's highest court, the Court of Session, none of which actually took place,
Exorbitant charges for storage of wills & other documents which clients were initially told was "a free service",
Shocking charges of up to £1,000 a time for the simple act of authorising payments, money transfers and other pay-outs to clients & beneficiaries.
In most of the 37 cases of disputed fees brought to the attention of Diary of Injustice, the clients involved have submitted complaints to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC), Law Society of Scotland & Faculty of Advocates. However, all three regulators have a poor track record in dealing with complaints over solicitors & advocates fees. Diary of Injustice recently reported on the reluctance of the SLCC to use its powers in complaints about fees, here : Regulator’s use of powers to reduce fees demanded by ‘crooked lawyers’ fails to keep pace with client complaints, dissatisfaction with Scots law firms
Some clients involved in disputes with their solicitors over clearly fraudulent fee demands have even approached their local Police Forces, asking for arrests & prosecutions, only to be shockingly told the issues "are civil matters", even though it is plain the criminal offence of fraud is at work in many of the cases.
A Police source speaking to Diary of Injustice pointed the finger of blame at Scotland's Crown Office. He alleged the Crown Office are reluctant to prosecute solicitors in Scotland for criminal offences involving acts committed against clients, a fact backed up by several cases covered by Diary of Injustice and the media in the past where inexplicably, Scotland's Lord Advocate & Crown Office staff have refused to prosecute Scottish solicitors from everything from fraud against clients to the theft of millions of pounds of taxpayer funded legal aid.
Recently, Diary of Injustice has reported on how some clients have either been threatened with, or were actually made bankrupt by their law firm over disputes involving bills for legal work even though the law firm had actually significantly weakened or even ruined their client's legal affairs. Readers can view more on this here :
Cases like those already reported and others currently under investigation have led to a string of sequestrations across Scotland as a result of applications by law firms for the recovery of fees which commonly involve attempts to sell off client's properties on the cheap to recover a few thousand pounds for a greedy law firm which cannot provide evidence for its charges to clients.
Our advice - If you have a bill from your solicitor, the first thing you need to do is ensure it is itemised, and then if there is any work you are not sure took place, or was necessary in the first place, query the amounts asked for and if necessary, involve the regulators as soon as possible. If consumers want to alert Diary of Injustice to dodgy fee demands from solicitors, please email us via scottishlawreporters@gmail.com
The Law Society of Scotland Edinburgh HQ provides access to justice ? More like a license to steal from clients. DURINGA BIG FREEZE, plumbers & repairmen are often demonised for charging what are branded ‘exorbitant fees’ by the press for coming out to fix your broken down gas boiler, frozen pipes or whatever the disaster is at home. Last winter for instance, we were treated to headlines such as “Big Freeze means big money for plumbers” who were alleged to be charging £150 an hour for repairing your frozen or broken pipes. However lawyers get away with this all the time, charging anything from £137 upwards an hour, yet newspapers, and most consumers pay no attention to these rip-off fees from the legal profession until its too late, that is, when the bill lands through your letterbox for yet another botched up job done by your soon-to-be unfriendly lawyer who has taken three years and several thousand pounds more to do a job you were told, or thought, could land you a tidy sum and be completed in a few months at most.
Now, as consumers you all like to think you are savvy, and wont be taken in by a cowboy builder who claims they can miraculously knock half your house down and rebuild it complete with a solid gold extension for £10.52 +VAT. In fact many [although not all] consumers do appear to be able to spot the cowboys in the building trade.
Not so with the legal profession, where it appears just about all of you, that is, everyone & anyone strolling through the doors of some lawyer’s office lose all their common sense and their supposed consumer savvy to the little-more-than-a-snake-charmer sitting behind the desk, promising you access to justice, a reasonable deal on a house or some resolution to some [let’s be honest, idiotic] dispute between you & your neighbours which is going to be blown out of all proportion by yours & their lawyers for years, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds to both of you and your families.
Have you heard the one about the boundary dispute between two neighbours which started in 2006, where both parties have forked out over SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS and are still nowhere near a court or a resolution to their squabble? There must be thousands of cases like this in Scotland & throughout the UK, and all that happens is your friendly lawyer who is billing you for several pints of blood by the hour, is making themselves & their law firm a lot richer while you get a lot poorer.
How about the one where the lawyer arm twists you into writing a will, appointing your lawyer as your executor and its witnessed by the secretaries of the law firm ? Again, thousands of times a year this happens throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK, and thousands of times a year there are complaints about the same lawyers ripping off the wills of their dead clients yet not one of these consumers who believe themselves to be savvy enough to spot a hot deal, or a cold crook, twig to the fact they are being ripped off in a scam which sees lawyers steal hundreds of millions of pounds from deceased’s estates every year throughout the UK.
Divorce, wills, boundary disputes, land & property transactions, damages claims, negligence, you name it, your lawyer provides it, all in the name of access to justice. Its actually business, and a very profitable one for them.
We could sit here talking about examples where lawyers have ripped off consumers all day, thousands of cases happening all over the country, to people who consider themselves able to spot a hot deal on the internet, yet when it comes to dealing with a lawyer, just about all consumers seem to turn into a soggy old bar of soap waiting to be scooped up and thrown in the bin.
So, the next time some lawyer tells you they exist to provide access to justice, and want to rip you off at £130 plus an hour, or when your solicitor hands you some surprisingly cheap estimate of what you legal troubles will cost you to resolve, walk out of your lawyers office before your life becomes a living hell and you join the thousands of people out there every year who have to deal with the same ‘surprisingly cheap estimate from their lawyer’ which then turns out to be anywhere up to 17 times the figure a few years on from when you first stupidly engaged your solicitor on some frivolous issue just because you were promised a megabucks settlement which turned out to be fantasy.
You made a mistake hiring your lawyer in the first place, you know that now. You realise your will is a bit of a scam, because the lawyer is going to help themselves to most of it, you realise your years long boundary dispute, or your years long trek to court to sue a hospital over a medical injury is going nowhere because the case is really more about your lawyer making their fees, rather than any final settlement for you obtaining the ‘justice’ you claim you deserve.
So, why don't you do something about it and stop throwing your money at lawyers you know nothing about who are in reality doing this on a regular basis to client after client ? We are in a recession, you know, and the last people you should be going anywhere near is the best pals of the bankers, the lawyers who are so worried about their dwindling business, they are beginning to place stories in newspapers in attempts to bring more clients through the doors of their chambers of horrors.
AND NOW THE GOOD NEWS : LAWYERS PROFITS IN STEEP DECLINE
Earnings of Scottish solicitors have taken a dive since the recession of 2008, however, to compensate for their loss of earnings, theft of client funds, fraudulent fee demands, embezzlement, negligence, and the numbers of cases being taken on by solicitors to scoop up fees and dropped later on without a result are swelling by the day.
Profits per partner have fallen from £104,000 in 2008 to £64,000 in 2010, while fees per partner are down from £125,000 to £104,000 over the same period. This reflects the fact that solicitors were able to charge £146 per hour on average in 2008 but were charging £137 per hour by 2010. To compensate for this, salaries have risen as a proportion of fees from 30% in 2008 to 34% almost in percentage terms, in line with the rising levels of fraud against clients.
The figures also report there are 10,380 too many solicitors in Scotland, plus about the same number of paralegals, who are also looked after by the Law Society of Scotland (escpecially the ones who like to steal from client' accounts to fund their spending, or even drug habits).
Of those 10,380 solicitors wrecking havoc throughout the country and dipping their fingers into your finances, 3659 work in private practices as principals, with a further 3416 as partners or juniors. Of the rest, 1734 work in the public sector either for the Scottish Government, councils or quangos, doing as much damage as they can to public services in Scotland and taking as much as they can from the public purse, and 761 work as in-house legal advisers for private companies, which is probably why a lot of private companies are suffering because they are being provided by bad & expensive legal advice. A higher proportion of solicitors are men, with the split currently standing at 54% to 46%.
Law Society of Scotland does little against fee fraud complaints.With the ongoing revelations from Westminster of a culture of greed revealed among politicians over their expenses claims, shamed into repayments only because of public naming & shaming by the media, calls are now growing for similar shaming of some of our notoriously if needlessly expensive legal firms, as the profession fails to deal with the issue of solicitors exorbitant & fraudulent fee demands to clients.
Basically, since competition in legal services has not existed in Scotland, ever, and the relevant legislation dating back to 1990 via Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Misc Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990, which would have enabled wider rights of audience in Scottish Courts was withheld from implementation for 17 years to March 2007, solicitors and legal firms have charged clients what they wanted, in an orgy of spiralling greed, rather than allowing market conditions and market competition to set the price of legal services in Scotland.
If for instance, a solicitor wants a second or third home, or a new car, up the costs to clients go, unchecked, and must be paid on threat of legal action or repossession of clients assets .. and solicitors seem to have as easy a time ramping up their bills and claiming expenses for anything they want, just as much as MPs at Westminster loading their expenses claims for everything under the sun, soaking the taxpayer for all they could get – and getting away with it until now.
Just as at Westminster, where the 'Fees Office' set the rules for Parliamentary expenses claims, providing MPs with a justification for their claims for cleaning the swimming pool, moat, or paying everything (including their mortgage allowance) on their second home which of course they must have as one of life's necessities, the Law Society used to set its Table of Fees, by which solicitors could refer back to as justification for supporting their extortionate bills to clients, despite the poor quality of legal work, and high case failure rate.
After the Table of Fees were withdrawn in 2005, legal firms decided themselves how to ramp up the costs of litigation, and up to sky high levels they went as bonuses, cars, new offices, and all manner of perks were paid for out of clients soaring legal bills, while case success rates and quality of legal services remained poor, generating record levels of consumer complaints to the Law Society of Scotland.
Advice from the Law Society's own website currently offers the following : "With the withdrawal of the Society’s Table of Fees, it will not be appropriate to refer to fees recommended by the Society. If, for example in executries, the file is to be feed by an external fee charger such as an Auditor or Law Accountant, the basis on which the external fee charger will be asked to fee up the file needs to be stated to the client needs to be included. If hourly rates are reviewed during the course of the work, the clients will need to be told about any increase or there is a risk that firms will be unable to charge the higher rate."
I can only describe that as hopeless. Clients are hardly ever if ever informed about changes in rates, until the fee demand arrives on their doorstep.
The Law Society's advice continues : "As well as the hourly rate any commission which will be charged on capital transactions or on the sale of a house would need to be included. In any matter where the account is being rendered on a detailed basis, the charges for letters, drafting papers, etc will need to be expressed as well as the hourly rate. They can be in a separate schedule referred to in the basic letter."
Again, this is pure fantasy from the Law Society.
On matters of Executries & deceased estates, the Law Society offers the following : "In executries where the only executors are solicitors in the firm, the information should be provided to the residuary beneficiaries, as they will be meeting the fees out of their shares of the residue. In other executries the information should be provided to the non solicitor executors. "
I have never encountered this taking place in an executry yet, and since the handling of wills & executries by Scottish legal firms seems to produce the highest levels of fraud & embezzlement I have ever seen, the only advice I could give to anyone trying to write a will is keep lawyers and accounts well away from your belongings, because whatever your bequests are in your will, they will never reach their intended beneficiaries in their entirety if a lawyer has anything to do with it.
In my experience of cases, clients who embarked on litigation often find their solicitors are content to write letter after letter to opposing legal teams, for no reason at all, other than to scoop up fees in some cases of £250+VAT for a single letter with four lines of text on it .. and several follow up letters which usually achieve nothing other than to inflate the solicitor's fee demand.
In one example of a case I heard of, there were 42 follow up letters at £150 each which totalled £6,300, with the case remaining unresolved after four years of letter writing and projected court costs of £10,000, all over a boundary fence misplaced by a galactic "5.2 inches" which the defenders in the action were at one stage willing to settle until their lawyer advised they should fight it out and continue sending costly replies to the pursuers costly enquiries.
Both legal firms in that case, in the Scottish Borders, have a good game of ping pong going - pursuers & defenders have paid over £10,000 each over a fence and a dispute, which might be settled quicker if wood worm eat the fence away, than if the two legal firms have their way.
Amazingly both those legal firms handle legal aid work too .. but I wonder, if they are so dishonest with their private clients, can they be trusted to receive public legal aid funds ?
The obvious conclusion from this is that solicitors who rip off their private clients, or are subject to complaints involving dodgy fee demands and other financial irregularities should not be allowed to claim legal aid fees.
In the past 12 months, many people have contacted me over their sudden receipt of huge fee demands from their solicitors, usually in the thousands of pounds, for as it usually turns out, non existent work allegedly undertaken two or more years ago, with little or no accounting of what that work actually entailed.
As an example, one demand sent to me by a worried client of an Edinburgh legal firm, who, among their case work, specialise in representing the Law Society of Scotland's Master Policy insurance, protecting crooked lawyers from negligence claims, threatened“legal action in seven days if an account of £23,000 was not paid immediately”. It was the first time the client had seen the bill, and notably there was no explanation of the work, no detailed breakdown, nothing at all to indicate what the solicitor had actually done, other than the words "working on a boundary dispute & drawing up letters".
The client contacted the legal firm, and pointed out they had ceased working on the boundary case in October 2006, due to settlement with the defenders, and that fees had been paid in full at the time, producing a receipt from the firm itself confirming that to be the case.
One of the senior partners of this legal firm then wrote back to the client, informing them "charges for work had been overlooked and not included in the fees at the time, and must now be paid or we will take legal action against you as intimated in our fee note."
The client returned to me, and I advised them to inform the legal firm they had passed on copies of the accounts to myself, and were going to call in the Police. Two days later, a letter arrived from the legal firm explaining "a clerical error had led to the fee note being issued, which has now been withdrawn."
However, not all cases of what can only be described as fraudulent fee demands, end up as easy to resolve as the above example, and, with the financial downturn affecting legal business significantly, I have noticed a huge upswing in legal firms bullying clients with demands for legal fees on work which simply never took place, and cannot be accounted for. When clients dare challenge these fee demands, the legal firm usually backs down, only after a threat of media exposure.
The legal services market, as it currently stands as a market monopoly controlled by the Law Society of Scotland and its members, cannot be trusted to set fees for legal services. These practices must end.
However, not only must it end, given the volume of complaints against fraudulent fee demands from the legal profession, there must be an independent fees commission to watch over the costs of legal services, ensuring access to justice is within the reach of everyone, not just the rich, or those the legal profession itself chooses to represent.
Given the high levels of fraud in solicitors fee demands, there must also be an independent inquiry into how far and how long this has been going on, with a view to the public being paid back money which has falsely been claimed by solicitors for work they never did, or legal services which were mishandled, either incompetently, or deliberately, just to inflate fee demands equating to a level of extortion over clients which cannot be allowed to go unchecked or unpunished.
There is little doubt we are in a recession, and amid falling house prices, falling pay packets, rising energy bills and rising unemployment, the outlook is certainly not a rosy one for everybody and even Scotland's multi billion pound legal services market, controlled exclusively by the Law Society of Scotland is now experiencing problems, with the likelihood of job losses and hardship along with the rest of us.
However, while the Law Society of Scotland last week issued a Press Release on the subject of the current poor economic climate affecting lawyers, citing its concerns over redundancies and problems in the legal sector, there was a marked reluctance to talk about lawyers hiking up their fees for legal work which remains markedly poor in competence or honesty.
Of course, when industries feel the pinch, they put the bills up. British Gas just did that, upping the cost of your fuel bills by a whopping 35% ... and no doubt petrol will be going up again soon too .. putting the squeeze on your pockets along with the cost of everything else we all consume.
There should therefore be little surprise to you that lawyers have decided to hike their own legal fees by (in some cases) a whopping 40% on top of the £1.2billion they are already making from clients, so its now the turn of consumers to get hit with large legal bills too …
So, have you recently been charged £3,500 from a solicitor for a little work which might have only been £1,050 ?, because that is now happening to clients all over Scotland .
Time perhaps to challenge your solicitors fees just as many have challenged Bank fees and more unacceptable charges for less than adequate service …
Bill Aitken MSP : Scots Legal Services market worth £1.2billion … but that's not enough for some as lawyers fees now hit your roof !
As you can see from the above video, it was only a few months ago that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and others so fond of solicitors at the expense of consumers, stood up in the Scottish Parliament and toasted the multi billion pound monopolistic legal services industry in Scotland controlled by the Law Society of Scotland, so why now should some in the legal world feel they have to hike up the cost of their work for clients, which is still mostly poor and lacking in standards.
Well, for one thing, property prices are down, quite a bit, as are house sales, which rake in lots of money for solicitors in legal fees, so clients must be hit, and hit hard on other kinds of legal work now to make up for the shortfall.After all, keeping up the family, the three houses, the five cars and other wee bits on the side must be passed onto unsuspecting clients, and if you can’t pay, your house and possessions will do nicely.
There are certainly a few unsuspecting clients by the looks of things as some fee notes I saw earlier this week showed solicitors charging clients for work done while they were actually receiving legal aid, and settlements in long drawn out cases being withheld by legal firms, while they fiddle up fee notes of extortionate proportions, for ultimately achieving nothing .. just to steal the settlements in their entirety for themselves, the client ultimately getting nothing … not a penny …
In one case brought to my attention, concerning a long running land dispute, a family who employed one of Edinburgh's top legal firms, have ultimately been hounded out by their landlord, yet they have received a large settlement to ensure their departure.
Unfortunately for that family in the case I refer to, their 'big name' Edinburgh lawyers have now taken the entire agreed settlement while they do some creative accounting for work done, which in reality wasn't much, if anything at all.
A small, but important detail to the case is the family concerned were on legal aid the whole time … but all the while, that ‘big name’ Edinburgh legal firm were demanding additional private cash payments … while apparently not disclosing such demands & payments to the Legal Aid Board, in what now seems to be a typical practice to make up for shortfalls in other areas of business.
But what will the Scottish Legal Aid Board think .. or do ? if they find out this 'big name' Edinburgh legal firm was demanding money from the clients while also taking from the legal aid purse .... as so many legal firms seem to be doing these days ...
Of course, you don't really get to find out much about lawyers fees, because the legal profession sets its own fees, and is accountable to no one in that respect.
Yes, lawyers set their own fees. There is no independent body to adjudicate on what lawyers can and cannot charge for their services. The Law Society of Scotland basically gives the go ahead for lawyers to charge what they want, and if you don't like it, when faced with a large account you cannot pay, your house will do nicely, if not your life.
Oh yes .. there is the not so often used "taxation of fees" where if you are unhappy with the fees charged by your solicitor in litigation which may have ended up in the Court of Session, you can apply to the "Auditor of the Court of Session" to have your account 'independently scrutinised', but here's a surprise for you - the Auditor of the Court of Session is a member of the Law Society of Scotland, so, in Scotland’s most important courtroom, there is no independent scrutiny of lawyers fees.
The present Auditor of the Court of Session is Mr Neil J Crichton, who was appointed to his position in December 1997, over 11 years ago and will be retiring on 28 September 2008. The following release from the then Scottish Executive lists Mr Crichton’s appointment :
ISSUED ON BEHALF OF SCOTTISH COURTS ADMINISTRATION
The Secretary of State has appointed Mr Neil J Crichton to be Auditor of the Court of Session on the retirement of Mr J Haldane Tait on March 31, 1998. Mr Crichton is currently senior partner in the Edinburgh firm of Aitken Nairn WS.
BACKGROUND
The Auditor of the Court of Session is a statutory appointment made by the Secretary of State on the nomination of the Lord Advocate. The main duty of the Auditor is, on remit from the Court, to tax accounts of expenses incurred in civil litigation and fix the remuneration of the receivers and liquidators. He also taxes accounts which the Scottish Legal Aid Board are unable to agree with the Solicitor and/or Counsel acting for a legally-assisted client in a Court of Session case.
News Release - 1975/97 Date December 9, 1997
It is important to note the "Auditor of the Court of Session" is not accountable to the Scottish Court Service in terms of if a complaint is filed against his decisions on fees.
The Auditor of the Court is in fact, a practicing solicitor, a member of the Law Society of Scotland.
It is a fact that all solicitors, and members of the Law Society of Scotland must also keep their indemnity insurance payments to the same Master Insurance Policy which itself has been brought into such disrepute concerning concocted fee notes over negligent legal service for many years, many of such cases surfacing in the media.
So, if you have a complaint about a huge bill from a solicitor which involves work in the Court of Session, and which is wholly unjustified, you can take it to taxation, which means giving it to the Auditor of the Court of Session.
However, if you remain unsatisfied with the Auditor of the Court of Session's findings, you cannot complain to the Scottish Courts Service, because the Auditor of the Court of Session does not fall within the remit of the SCS, the Auditor falls within the remit of the Law Society of Scotland to whom you must make a complaint if you remain dissatisfied with the Auditor’s decision in your case.
So, bearing in mind all of the above, is it safe now, in these times of required and expected reforms to Scotland's woefully poor legal services market, to allow another solicitor, and member of the Law Society of Scotland, the power of auditing solicitors legal fees in Scotland’s highest court, when there are disputes from clients?
Surely it should now be the case that, with the measure of independent regulation brought in with the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, there should be a new system of independent scrutiny of solicitors fees where clients feel they are unexplainably and unjustifiably high.
Perhaps now is the time to bring in an independent and accountable panel of auditors who are not linked to the legal profession, but are able to hear cases of client challenge to exorbitant legal fees and independently adjudicate on what are ever spiraling costs of legal services in the current solicitor monopolised Scottish legal services market.
It is important to note that while all Sheriff Courts have an auditor of the court, not all are solicitors. There are three solicitors who are “Auditors of the Court’, based at Scotland’s three key courts – Glasgow, Aberdeen, and of course, the Court of Session in Edinburgh. The remaining auditor’s of court in the Sheriff Courts, are employed directly by the Scottish Courts Service.
You can find out more about “Taxation” at the Court of Session on the Auditor of the Court of Session’s website here : Taxation at the Court of Session
The Law Society’s explanation of how to query solicitors fees begins with an uninspiring account of what they cannot do …
“The Law Society of Scotland does not have the power to consider the amount of fees charged by a solicitor but has responsibility in relation to considering the quality of service provided by the solicitor.”
Interestingly, the Law Society of Scotland leave out the fact the auditors of Scotland’s main courts, are actually members of the Law Society of Scotland, and that in effect, you have a solicitor adjudicating the fees of another solicitor, which is certainly not a model of independent scrutiny by any measure of the word.
It cannot be said the Law Society’s information on challenging solicitor’s fees inspires any degree of trust whatsoever, after the Law Society of Scotland has acted with such contempt against clients for decades when complaints have been made against not only crooked & negligent solicitors, but also those who on a regular basis, fiddle their legal fees to you, sky high.
Time for a much needed change on how solicitors fees are set and scrutinised, to ensure full and proper consumer protection from a money making system which currently runs itself without accountability to anyone.
My advice to readers :Faced with a high legal bill from your solicitor ? Publish it online, name the lawyer and the legal firm, and challenge the authenticity & accountability of their fees.
It’s now time to challenge those big legal bills from lawyers just as people have successfully challenged extortionate bank charges which have been taking place for years against consumers. Remember – it’s your money … and no one is unjustly entitled to it.
Injustice Scotland’s campaign to reclaim high legal charges :
Just for reference, here is the Law Society’s Press Release, which was passed onto me by a journalist who could hardly stop laughing at the prospect of a few lawyers losing their jobs …
There isn’t much thought about clients in the Law Society’s Press Release which focuses on the hardship of lawyers … but of course, hiking the fee notes to clients might help a few retain their jobs and luxuries at your expense …
Henry Robson, deputy chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland, said: “Legal firms, like many other businesses in Scotland, are feeling the effects of the current economic climate.
“The Law Society is monitoring the situation and while at present relatively few solicitors have informed us of being made redundant, we have had reports of support staff from firms across the country having lost their jobs, which is a real concern.
“The professional practice department is giving help and advice to solicitors who may yet be faced with losing their job or equally to solicitor employers who have never before been in the position of having to make people redundant.
The Law Society is just one of many organizations to be affected by the uncertainty of the property market and we have decided to delay plans to relocate.
“The legal profession is not only being affected by the economic situation, but also by changes in legislation. For example, the slowdown has come at a time when summary justice reforms are having a negative impact on the volume of criminal legal aid work.”
The Law Society’s president, Richard Henderson, has written to Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to raise concerns about the impact on the profession of the current economic downturn and there has also been a meeting with Kenny MacAskill, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, to make strong representations about the potential detrimental effects of the plans to introduce Home Reports in December.
The Law Society is working on a number of initiatives to support solicitors, including holding a conference to provide information and business advice specifically for high street firms. The charity LawCare can also offer advice and support to solicitors facing difficulties.
The Law Society’s education and training department is also offering support to those concerned about traineeships.
Mr Robson added: “As the representative body for solicitors, and working closely with paralegal colleagues, we share the profession's concerns and will continue to monitor the situation closely and provide support to our members."
ENDS
so … lawyers will get all the help they need from the Law Society .. but clients will have to pay for it through the nose … inspiration to avoid using a solicitor who is a member of the Law Society of Scotland and a good argument again, to open up Scotland’s legal services market much quicker than Mr MacAskill seems to be willing to do …
