Lots of people feel wary about using solicitors, considering them to be too expensive (and a bit pompous), so it is perhaps worth having a post on this blog giving the reasons why using a solicitor is generally a good idea.
1. Legal knowledge and training
It takes a long time to study and train to be a solicitor – I know, I’ve done it. There are three stages:
- The academic stage, which is either a law degree or if you have a degree in something else, a conversation course which covers the main legal topics.
- The professional training stage, which is normally a one year course studying the legal practice course, although you can do it part time, and
- The practical stage where you work as a trainee solicitor at a law firm for two years.
I discussed training to be a solicitor in my blog post >>here.
Once qualified, all solicitors have to do 16 hours continuing professional development per year, and will not be given their practice certificate unless they have done this.
2. Insurance
All solicitors firms must obtain professional indemnity insurance and are not allowed to continue in practice without it.
In addition all solicitors pay into a compensation fund to cover those few situations, which are not covered by the professional indemnity insurance.
3. Solicitors code of conduct
All solicitors have to work to a code of conduct which you will find on the Solicitors Regulation Authority website.
4. Legal complaints service
There is a special organisation set up to deal with complaints against solicitors. It is called the Legal Complaints service. Visit the Legal Complaints Services web-site for more information.
You can find out more about solicitors regulation generally from the web-site of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which has helpful information about using solicitors.
5. Legal analysis and experience
As well as the important regulatory stuff discussed above, there is another reason why a solicitor is a good choice if you have a legal problem.
As you study law, during the long procedure leading to qualification and afterwards, your brain changes and you learn to think in a different way.
I started my legal training a bit later than most and I noticed this happening. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s rather like having a radar in your head which can spot legal problems and analyse them. (I imagine the same thing happens with doctors and diagnosis).
This is the real reason why a solicitor is a good choice, and is also why they are entitled to charge what to some people may seem to be over high fees. Anyone can look something up in a book. But it takes long training and experience to understand how the rules all fit together and can be applied to any one situation. And also to anticipate the pitfalls which may trap the unwary.
A non regulated adviser or organisation, may be able to provide a perfectly adequate service for standard situations. However not all situations are standard. And (worryingly) this may not be immediately apparent at first glance.
Where these unregulated services often fall down is that they fail to spot those warning signs which make your situation different, and which mean that your case needs to be dealt with in a different way.
Other legal service providers
- Legal Executives also have a long and rigorous training, are regulated, and are often just as good as a solicitor. Sometimes they are better. Most of the comments above about solicitors, apply to Legal Execs too.
- Likewise licensed conveyances can be an excellent choice for conveyancing work.
- Barristers have an equally rigorous training and experience to solicitors, but do not generally work directly with the public.
However non regulated advisors (including some advisors with large national charities) and unregulated quasi legal service providers may have had limited training and experience, and their advice should be treated with caution.
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I agree wholeheartedly and hope the Law Society’s campaign to raise awareness of solicitors services will have the right effect. It’s also down to us solicitors ourselves to raise our profiles in the face of Tesco law competition and show that we are more accessible than before and good value for money.
Sian Thompson recently posted..Marketing Ploys – a quick rant
The thing is, there are actually a lot of pretty mediocre solicitors out there, who are also only fit for fairly standard advice, and quality is in no way correlated with cost.
The problem, as in any market is information. There isn’t a good way for clients to assess who is good, and who isn’t, and I think that to an extent this is a problem for solicitors: none of us can stand out, except on the basis of word of mouth, and fairly ephemeral branding.
Even the mediocre solicitors are, I would suggest, better than using someone who is unqualified and unregulated. Surveys and such show that solicitor problems are more often to do with not returning telephone calls and not keeping clients informed, rather than actual wrong advice.
Although I agree, it is difficult for non lawyers to know who is good and who is less good – if they knew enough to tell this, they probably wouldn’t need a solicitor in the first place!
I would unfortunately agree with Marcin. Though I think lawyers are not mediocre in their knowledge, they became lazy and not bothered, since rental disputes don’t bring them high profits.
Laura Miller recently posted..Welcome to Paphos Rent Easy blog
We have a devil of a job just trying to find a solicitor that will take our cases on, because a) a lot of them are LSC funded and b) there are literally no solicitors in our entire borough who know much, if anything, about housing law.
I could pass thousands of pounds worth of work their way if only there was one we could trust to do the job and be proactive enough to do emergency cases. This is why I end up doing injunctions and defending possession myself.