Conduct and service

Watch those costs estimates

When clients raise complaints, the solicitor's reaction is often that this is a ruse to get the bill reduced.

Very often, however, even if that is the case, the solicitor fails to appreciate that the client does have good cause to complain.

Another feature of such complaints is that they are often an amalgam of various concerns, some of which the client may have harboured for some time.

Some of these points were illustrated by a complaint in which the solicitors had acted for the client for more than two years in connection with his divorce.

At the outset, the firm had told the client that he could expect a bill in the region of 2,500.

The firm regularly sent their client interim bills.

The penultimate one left the total cost just a little short of the original estimate.

Nine months later, the fee earner who had always dealt with the client left the firm, but the client wasn't told until after his departure.

The client telephoned to ask to speak to the fee earner, only to be told he had gone.

A week or so later the firm wrote to the client to confirm the previous fee earner's departure and to tell him who would be dealing with him from then on.

At the same time, the solicitors sent the client an additional bill that took his costs 750 above the estimate he had been given originally.

It seems that this was the final straw - there were other matters that had also been of concern to the client.

The client paid his bill, demanded his papers and instructed another firm.

He then filed his complaints.

The matter went to appeal.

The panel found that, while the solicitors' service had been of a reasonable standard in respect of the majority of the matters that the client complained about, there were issues where this was not the case.

Chief among these was the costs information he had been given.

Possibly because of the change of fee earner, the solicitors rendered their last (interim) account four months late.

That took the costs well in excess of the previously indicated estimate.

The panel took the view that there had been ample time to warn the client that the estimate was going to be exceeded.

Although the panel believed it would have been preferable for the client to have been told in advance of the fee earner's departure, it did not believe the length of time subsequently taken to inform him was actually unreasonable.

However, it was apparent that this was certainly a factor in the client's decision to transfer instructions and to complain.

The panel ordered the firm to refund to the client the costs in excess of the estimate.

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