Conduct and service

Costs, shared costs or no costs?

Sometimes, the multiplicity of complaints against a solicitor makes one wonder why the client allowed them to continue to act.

However, the origin can usually be traced to one specific issue which caused the client genuine concern.

A feature of such complaints is often that many of the issues raised are not justified and, indeed, it is unlikely that they would have become the subject of complaint had the original fault not occurred.

In one such case, the solicitors were instructed to act for a respondent wife who disputed the grounds for divorce expressed in the petition, but did not want to prolong the marriage.

She was advised to allow the petition to proceed on receiving the husband's assurance that he would not seek to rely on the alleged behaviour in any future issue between the parties.

One issue that did concern the wife was that the petition contained a prayer for costs to be made against her.

While that issue was compromised, within it lay the seeds of the complaint that was later to surface.

The wife had told her solicitors that she had no objection to a shared costs order being made.

In the event, by consent, there was no order for costs - which one might have thought amounted to pretty much the same thing.

However, there were also the costs in respect of the ancillary matters to take into account.

While the solicitors had given their client information about that aspect of the matter, they had not ensured that their client understood that the question of the costs of obtaining the divorce decree and the costs relating to the ancillary issues were independent of each other.

The result was that the client was confused.

The worry which resulted from that then gave rise to other issues that the wife also raised as complaints, including failing to follow her instructions, delay, failing to draft documents accurately and failing to keep her properly informed.

The moral is clear - to avoid spawning unjustified and time-consuming complaints, ensure costs information is clear and is understood by the client.

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.