Conduct and service

'Cease work' means just that

Not for the first time, the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OSS) recently received a complaint that solicitors had carried on doing work for the client after they had been told not to do anything further, and had then sought to charge the client for what had been done.

When challenged, the solicitor's excuse is invariably the same - we have a professional obligation to respond to correspondence received from the other side.

This notion is mistaken, as the following complaint demonstrates.

The solicitors had been acting in a divorce matter for the petitioning wife.

During the divorce proceedings, the husband used every opportunity to raise all manner of red herrings.

Therefore, when the decree absolute was available, the wife instructed her solicitors to have no more contact with the solicitors acting for the husband.

She explained she had spent enough money on her husband's whims and did not want any more work done on her behalf.

The solicitors acknowledged her instructions and even went so far as to confirm that, if any further correspondence was received from the other side, they would notify them that they were no longer acting.

Sure enough, about a month later a further letter arrived from the husband's solicitors attempting to raise yet more issues.

Without telling their client, the wife's solicitors responded to it and then billed her for the work involved.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the client protested.

The solicitors maintained that they were professionally obliged to have responded and their bill was, in effect, for their having to meet those professional obligations.

The unhappy client reported the issue to the OSS, who drew the solicitors' attention to principle 12.10 of the Guide to the Professional Conduct of Solicitors, 1999, eighth edition.

This states: 'Where a solicitor receives letters from third parties, or from solicitors acting on their behalf...

instructions should be sought from the client.

Unless instructed to provide a substantive reply, failure to do so would not normally amount to professional misconduct.

As a matter of courtesy, however, the solicitor should normally acknowledge such letters and may add that he ...

will not entertain any further correspondence.'

In this case, the solicitors already had the client's instructions, which they chose to ignore.

Not only that, they adopted an uncompromising attitude to the subsequent complaint, when all the indications were that had they offered to withdraw the bill and apologised for having sent one, the matter would have gone no further.

The subsequent order to forego the offending bill and to pay the client 500 compensation, upheld on appeal, was a salutary lesson not to ignore clients' instructions and to respond appropriately to the consequent complaint if this is not done.

Every case before the adjudication panel is decided on its individual facts.

This case study is for illustration only and should not be treated as a precedent

LawyerlineFacing a service complaint? Need advice on how to handle it? Contact Mike Frith at LAWYERLINE, the support service offered by the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors, tel: 0870 606 2588.