I am one of the many practitioners who welcome the postal ballot that has been forced on the Law Society in respect of the payment of referral fees. Quite how the Society cannot see the possibility of a conflict of interest in relation to referral fees is beyond my comprehension.

One of the most common payments that I envisage being made would be to pay estate agents for introductions. The only way to fund such payments would be to increase the fees paid by the client and thus the client could be funding referral fees for a service ultimately not in the client's best interests. What would the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal have made of this ten years ago?


Should we as a profession not be thinking in different terms? I realise it is not practical to charge estate agents for all the time-wasting telephone calls they make to us. However, when acting on a sale, typically we are asked to settle the agent's account. This involves (at the very least) our sending it to our client for approval, receiving approval, drawing and sending a cheque to the estate agent, receiving receipted account and forwarding this to the client.


Should we not be making a charge for this service? Would it not be helpful for the Law Society to endorse this practice and to recommend a guideline charge rather than pursue ways to dilute our income even further.



Peter Coe, solicitor, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire