Minimum Service To Expect From Your Lawyer
General July 25th, 2009Once you have chosen a solicitor, what is an acceptable service standard you should receive and what happens if it is poor?
If you have instructed a UK Solicitor for the first time, you may be confused over the level of service you should expect to receive from them. This would not be any surprise really, as very few people who have not studied law, will really have any true appreciation of what standards of service they should expect from any law firm.
First and foremost, would be the initial advice that you receive from the law firm, once you have instructed them. This is up to you to ensure that you are taking in all that the solicitor is saying to you, and if there are any points which you are struggling to understand, ask them to go over these again. The solicitor’s main job is to provide you with the legal advice and most will actually do this part of their job very well. Once you have had the main appointment with them, they should then send you a letter soon afterwards, to clarify the main legal points that had arisen in the appointment.
The Lawyer should make it clear at the appointment stage if they intend to progress with your case. Once this stage is reached you might want to actively be involved. It is a good idea to ask the solicitor to give you an approximate timescale for when they believe relevant actions will be completed. As with anything in the Law, some things might be out of their control and it is important to remain realistic. Be mindful that something may take meetings with other people. If a third party delays proceedings, it would not be right to put blame on your solicitor.
Regular communication is essential once you have taken on a legal solicitor services to keep you up to date with events. This is a very common area of service where solicitors can give a shoddy service. In short, do not allow them to get away with this. If needs be, call them and chase them for information. If they appear to be ignoring you persistently, you really should threaten them with an official complaint. All too many solicitors will not contact you unless they feel it is absolutely necessary.
Once you have used the services of a firm of solicitors, when you receive the bill, make sure you check absolutely every listing for accuracy. This is often a poor area of a solicitors service. If there are any aspects of the bill which you feel are wrong, or you do not understand, query this at your earliest convenience. If you remain certain that there is a mistake and want to complain about a solicitor, pursue a complaint to a senior partner. If things don’t work out you can go to the Legal complaints service who can take a look at your situation.
If you are particularly concerned over these issues, you can always use a good solicitors’ directory to find the law firm that you feel will be most able to deal with your specific case. Where law firms or concerned, most directories will only supply a very limited amount of information about a solicitor. Therefore, these may not really be of any use to you in this regard. You need a directory which will rate the relevant firms accordingly and allow you to select the best for yourself. http://www.Solicitor.info is a great such lawyer directory to do this.
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