Innocent colloquialism or condescending…?

“Please don’t call me your dear, that sort of thing isn’t acceptable now” - call him out every time until he gets the message.

We use central mailboxes and bypassing isn’t allowed as you have processes for a reason. It ensures work dealt with in priory order, allocation according to skills and capacity and things aren’t missed if someone off. Some clients try and bypass and we push back to mailbox. Please can you send instructions to x email. They soon learn.

As for fees. Reply the legal fees for x job are £x (as published?) I’ll notify the external party they’ll be invoiced £x

Yes, it’s annoying and patronising and he wouldn’t use similar language with a male solicitor (I find it inconceivable, for example, that he’d say “my boy”). I’m not sure if I’d raise it or just quietly seethe but I do sympathise.

Just call him that all the time in response. You are his equal so if that's the level of casualness he places on your communications then he can't be offended to be addressed as the same?

Or maybe just palm him off on your least favourite colleague if at all possible.

presumably you have internal process (you alluded to them) so just reject his requests and refer him to the internal process.

Just don't engage with him at all, just take the work from whoever allocates it. And any questions about costs? escalate to your boss right away.

Have you got an admin person who can send him an email summarising the fees that need to be charged to ensure he sends the right fees out. Saying please do not amend the below fees for any third party without agreeing this with named person at our company and receiving an amended signed quote from us or we will be invoicing the full amount to the client and highlighting that you have quoted x amount in error to them.

I'm retired and as an older woman I tend to get called Dear. Sometimes by women as well as men actually. And I find it incredibly patronising.

If a colleague had called me this in a work situation I would have been really outraged. And I agree with @Rowley456
that you should take it up with HR

I’d be my dearing back and also telling him I’d be allocating the legal costs not covered by his quote to his department.

In that case, he's a patronising little shit.

ETA He reminds me of certain of the private school boys around Glasgow...

I tend to call people like this “sweetie”. They don’t like it.

No I wouldn’t like it (also in house solicitor)

If he’s supposed to send work to central mailbox I’d say please send work to mailbox as per our protocol not directly to me. If he persists knock it back. You have a mailbox for a reason.

Please refer to me by first name not my dear in our professional correspondence.

If he persists flag it with his manager.

You probably have a code for how to deal with colleagues/conduct yourselves and my dear won’t be acceptable.

He sounds patronising if he's doing it in writing. (If it were only spoken, I might have assumed that he was only an old fart.)

The only exception that I can think of would be if he happens to be of Asian heritage - I find that Asian gentlemen tend to do this if they're speaking to someone of a different age group? I vaguely remember this happening when I was a young woman in Glasgow, when interacting with older Asian gentlemen.

Now I only get this with men of Asian heritage young enough to my sons or grandsons. (The gender neutral term used by most working class males in my part of the world to women they don't really know is 'pal'.)

I can't think of a similar term being used in a non-patronising way by other male group.

I'd be keeping a log of things and approaching HR if it continues.

Your best bet is to say it back to him. I can guarantee he won't like it, but won't have a leg to stand on as he said it to you first

‘Please just address me by my name, Nigel.’

Patronising and shaping up to be a complete pain in the arse.

Yes that is annoying.