As the wife of a provincial conveyancing/probate solicitor who has spent ten years building up a practice from a nil client base, I find it disgraceful that the Law Society has allowed the fee structure to sink to such a point that small solicitors are unable to afford to employ the staff to ease their colossal workload.


By opening the door to cheap-jack conveyancers and now actually encouraging the bribery of estate agents and doctors for work, they have sealed the fate of many small, family practices which will inevitably disappear in favour of the large corporate or national companies with their totally impersonal approach towards clients.



When my husband is not at work, he is usually working at home, yet his business merely provides a living for us, and that includes my own work on the accounts that counts only as a tax concession, and not a proper wage which I could earn outside the business.



The burden of responsibility has never been greater for conveyancers with the huge increase in house prices in the past few years, yet the fees have not kept pace with these changes, unlike for estate agents, whose fees are invariably ten times our fee for a house sale.



My husband is a very good and conscientious solicitor and well respected in our locality, but years of study and a lifetime's commitment to the profession have not yielded their just reward, but have left him to face an uncertain and worrisome future.



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