Am I alone in becoming increasingly frustrated by solicitors who adopt the CQS protocol yet refuse to accept draft documents by email? Recently, several firms have said that if we do not send paper copies they will print the emailed version and charge us £50 for doing so. The most recent reason given for doing this was that the firm in question had quoted on a low fixed-fee basis.

Whose problem is that then?

Could someone explain how this benefits a client? Should we insist all correspondence be sent through the post and then charge for every email to be printed off? Surely the starting point should be that all documents are sent by email unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise (and I can’t imagine any).

It would be nice to think that the law as a profession was at the cutting edge of technology, but the reality would appear to be otherwise.

Guy Hurst, partner, Eric Robinson, Winchester

 

 

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