Conduct and service

Take action

Many are the complaints to the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors in which the client maintains he has not been kept informed about progress in his case and received information only when he contacted the solicitor to ask for it.

This becomes even worse when the solicitor takes action only when prompted to do so by the client.

Either the solicitor has taken on too much work, or he does not maintain an effective file reminder system.

In this week's case, the solicitors were instructed by a client who was disputing her bill with a major utility.

Solicitors were instructed in November.

The client wanted them to to check whether the utility's assertions regarding her account were correct.

However, the solicitors failed to confirm the terms of their retainer in writing.

Moreover, the solicitors did nothing until the following March, when they sent a client care letter and wrote to the utility.

The utility failed to reply to the solicitor's letter or to reminders sent in June and July.

Nothing more was done until, exactly a year after the solicitors were first instructed, they referred the matter to the utility's complaints council.

Its reply was unsatisfactory.

The solicitors wrote again and a further two months passed before a reply was received.

By this time the utility was threatening to curtail the client's supply.

The solicitors now diverted their efforts to avoiding disconnection, to no avail.

The solicitors had, in fact, throughout pursued the matter with an emphasis on compensation, which was different to the emphasis the client wanted - clarification.

Had the solicitors confirmed the terms of their retainer, that could have been avoided.

The client now complained.

It was clear that, matters having got off to a bad start, they had got worse because the solicitors sat back after writing to the utility and waited for a reply.

They chased the matter again only when the client asked what was happening.

In a situation where the 'other side' was ignoring letters, the solicitors did nothing to push the matter along until prompted to do so.

They effectively helped allow the matter to drag on.

A compensatory award was inevitable.

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.