Conduct and service

Are client care letters mandatory?We recently highlighted continuing defects in the provision of cost information.

A recent case that came to the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) highlighted not only that issue, but also client care letters in general.The solicitors had been instructed in a divorce matter, the ancillary aspects of which took six years to conclude.

The first instruction was about a year after the requirements of Law Society practice rule 15 with regard to costs information had been amended, in 1991.After the solicitors bill had been taxed at slightly more than 10,500, the client complained that in 1994 she had been led to believe that the statutory charge would amount to no more than about 2,000.

She said that when she pressed for more information, the solicitor had told her that the costs would amount to approximately 5,000, which would be taxed down.

The client complained that she had been misled about the costs she would have to pay, and also that she had not received a client care letter.The OSS found that the client had in fact been given no information about the nature and effect of the statutory charge until the bill was submitted to the court for taxation.

Also, the client had not been given costs information between 1994 and taxation of the bill in 1998.While a finding of inadequacy of service based on costs information was inevitable, the complaint raised the issue of client care letters.In fact there is no need to send a client care letter at all.

Rule 15 requires certain information to be given at the outset of the retainer, but it does not stipulate how it is to be disclosed, provided it is in writing.

What has happened is that solicitors began to include that information in their first letter to their client.

As the requirements expanded, so did the size of the initial letter, which became known as a client care letter.

Then it became widely believed that client care letters are mandatory and that they must incorporate all the information required by what is now the Solicitors Costs Information and Client Care Code 1999.They are not and do not.

All the code requires is that the stipulated information must be given in writing.

If you want to give it in the form of a letter, that is perfectly acceptable.

But it does not have to be that way.

You can use a printed brochure or a separate document.

It really doesnt matter provided it is in writing.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.