Conduct and service

Client costsThe Solicitors' Costs Information and Client Care Code 1999, made under Law Society practice rule 15, requires that clients are given information about costs and other matters that it is considered essential for them to have.The code recognises that it may not be appropriate for a solicitor to have to give to every client all the information referred to on each and every occasion on which the solicitor is instructed.The code indicates that solicitors should consider the interests of each client in deciding whether to ignore any part of the code.Although the code suggests various circumstances in which the supply of all the required information may not be appropriate, the examples given are not comprehensive.

If a client complains that he or she was not supplied with certain information that the code normally requires to be given, the onus is on the solicitor to justify the omission.Such a situation arose in the case of a complaint by Mr A against QX & Co.

The circumstances were unusual in that Mr A was himself a solicitor.

For that reason, QX & Co decided that, as Mr A was presumably familiar with the way in which solicitors charged, they need not supply the costs information that they would normally have given.At the conclusion of his case, Mr A, who had won a partial victory, complained that he had been given no costs information, had been told nothing about how costs were accumulating, and had not been warned about his potential costs liabilities or the chances of full recovery of costs from his opponents.

The firm argued that Mr A, as a solicitor, would have known the information he complained of not being given.One of the snags was that Mr A was not a litigation lawyer.

Anyway, the OSS adjudicator considered that, even if he had been, he should still have been given information about the basis on which QX & Co proposed to charge him and how their charges would be calculated.Every firm decides individually on how it is going to charge and at what rate and, even though he was a solicitor, Mr A could not be expected to know that without being told.

Accordingly, he should also have been kept abreast of accumulating charges and QX & Co should have checked to see that he was fully aware of the other implications of getting involved in litigation.The decision to reduce QX & Co's costs by 10% was upheld on appeal.l Every case before the compliance and supervision committee is decided on its individual facts.

These case studies are for illustration only and should not be treated as precedents.