Regular poster but name changer for this...
Just wondering if anyone can give me advice on how to deal with solicitors that are causing problems please?
Brief background - Mum has been sent a bill by solicitors for some work done for my Aunt (her SIL), related to an old family business issue. My aunt died several years ago, the work was being done around the time she died.
Recently, something happened relating to the old family business that we needed a copy of the document involved and a little advice. The firm of solicitors have been personal and professional solicitors for the family for many years although over time there have been different individuals involved.
When they found the document, they found that they hadn't ever sent out the bill for the work done (several years previously) so sent it to her executors. Her estate was all finished and so they sent it to my Mum instead.
It's several thousand pounds (for something that the going rate seems to be significantly less today, let alone then). The work was done badly and never finished and they weren't in communication with anyone about it for several years, to all intents and purposes it seems that they forgot about it.
Mum has told them it is nothing to do with her, to go back to her estate. They have sent copies of the invoice again, although still haven't provided a break down of the work involved despite being asked, nor have they provided any evidence of what work they were commissioned by my aunt to do, or any retainer paid (and they seem to be a company that always gets a retainer paid up front). And this time, they have said that they have run up a further £1K doing work on the account in the last 6 months or so since this has all come to light - although they can't tell her who authorised this latest work or even what it was.
This time the summary invoice has come with a letter 'explaining the issues' but actually providing no information, just arse-covering and full of untruths (like 'we discussed this at length and you agreed to pay' and so on).
Mum is now obviously getting nervous - she doesn't want to pay up thousands that she had no involvement in for work that was badly done and that they are charging significantly more than other solicitors locally charge. But on the other hand she doesn't want to be taken to court and to run up legal fees defending herself and then discover she has to pay up - she seems to be in a lose-lose situation.
So...
If you've made it this far - sorry, didn't meant it to be quite such a rant so long - my question is this:
What would you do in these circumstances? How can she help herself and not end up with huge legal fees that weren't ever hers to start with?
We'll send a letter straight back detailing our understanding of each point they make and the errors made (several in each paragraph pretty much) and try to make it factual and non-emotional. However there are some that are just out and out lies (others where to give them the benefit of the doubt they haven't fact checked or assumed something and been wrong). Do we explicitly say they are telling lies or do we need to be more circumspect and say that their recollection of events is very different to our reality?
And is it time to cc it all to the partner in charge of the case or whatever he is called and formally raise a complaint or is it still too early?
And anything else that could help that I've forgotten to include?
Sorry this has ended up being so long but it's causing mum lots of stress that she could well do without at the moment (she's almost 80) and I'm trying my best to help but feeling a bit like a fish out of water not knowing what to do. And it's all coming on top of other stresses also caused by this same firm (albeit a different solicitor) who have created other problems and her dp appearing to be going rapidly downhill with some sort of dementia although he is adamant he isn't, so poor thing she is feeling attacked on all sorts of fronts.
Thank you!
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Legal matters
How to deal with solicitor problems?
zedley · 10/06/2013 00:19
Thank you everyone for your helpful suggestions.
Unfortunately it was only 4 years ago rather than 6 so it's not out of time yet.
actionlog I'd tried to be quite vague but what the hell - the family business has been sold (my dad and uncle have both died) but the land has been retained as a trust so we rent it to the company that was sold. My mum is a trustee of the land and my uncle was - but never replaced when he died. She had given her share of the land to me and sis; but was told by uncle and his solicitor that she had to be trustee (turned out this was not strictly true but solicitor forgot to mention to mum about having her own solicitor 
- the fact that he had also been dad's solicitor she assumed that he would also be advising in her best interest. Easy in hindsight to say Aaargghh!). She agreed to this on the basis but that it wouldn't incur her any costs, although conveniently this never made it into the trust documents.
when my uncle died, my aunt wasn't made a trustee but did undertake to sort out the renewal of the lease, but died shortly after we thought it had all been sorted. We discovered to our cost recently that although she had signed it and it had been sent to the tenants, they never returned it signed, which then caused us lots of problems when the parent company that had bought our company went bust. They had been paying rent and behaving like they had signed the lease which is why we didn't suspect - and they only rediscovered the unpaid invoice when we contacted them for a copy of the lease (we're also discovering that they don't send out copies of things like this so nobody has their own copy, you have to ask for one).
Some of the errors they have made are things like saying that aunt was a trustee when she wasn't and making up names for the trust that have never been used. But others are more serious like saying that as mum is a trustee then she is liable for this bill despite the fact that she gets absolutely no income from the trust and was promised she wouldn't ever incur costs. They have also just said that they were regularly chasing the other company for the return of the signed lease - despite not mentioning that there was a problem with the lease when my aunt died or at any point when they were sorting out her probate or when we first asked for a copy of the lease, so they had a good three years to mention it to us and ask for interim payment if they really had done anything!
We've asked for copies of their worksheets for the work twice now and they've just ignored it.
We're discovering other problems with them too - another chunk of land was shared as tenants in common by my uncle and dad. dad's share passed to mum when he died, although it seems that her name was never added as a beneficiary on the land (from what I understand it should have been my uncle that appointed a trustee to look after her interests or appointed her) although the land registry entry shows that there was a beneficiary. But after my uncle died, my aunt made a statement to these solicitors that she was the sole owner so they sent a sworn statement to that effect to the Land Registry office and the land was switched to being exclusively hers. When our solicitor asked on what basis they did this they ignored him. And when we initially tried to talk to them about it, all they would say was that the land wouldn't have passed to Dad when he died so they didn't see what the problem was despite us showing them that it was included in his probate. but as we can't prove that we didn't sell our share then they don't care and don't see that they have done anything wrong. And that we should have complained at the time - except who checks their land registry entries on a regular basis to check that somebody else hasn't claimed them?
Sorry, it's late, I'm venting and as you can imagine this is something that is an emotional thing - it's just really frustrating when you can see there is this massive injustice and the people involved in helping to cause the problem don't care.
Back to the original problem, I'm contacting them tomorrow with a point by point break down of all the inaccuracies in the letter sent, another request for all the client care letters relating to the file and also the associate work logs or break down of work done on the file (ie the document that says 10 minutes on a phone call, 20 minutes writing an email etc rather than just the xxx hours of work that we currently have) and complaining to the partner too. I suspect that we will be billed for sending them this letter too though!
Thanks again to everyone for your input, it has helped to clarify things. And I feel a little better for letting off steam too so thanks for that 
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