Solicitor falsely accused me of blackmail and identity fraud – what can I do?

[PoisedPearlHelper]

Hi everyone,
I’m feeling extremely distressed and could really use some advice.
A solicitor I approached just to witness a deed poll (literally a 10-minute job) has now written me a formal letter accusing me of identity fraud and blackmail, all because I left a Google review and asked for £150 compensation for the poor service I received.
To be clear:

• I turned up to the appointment on time, waited over an hour past the scheduled slot without apology, and was treated incredibly rudely throughout.
• The “identity fraud” claim appears to be based on my use of a perfectly valid house name (e.g., “The Croft”) in the deed poll, which is how my address appears on HMRC letters and utility bills.
• I corrected a typo on the deed by hand with their permission before it was witnessed.
• I later went to an independent solicitor who confirmed everything was fine and properly re-witnessed the deed poll.

Despite this, I received an aggressive letter warning me I would "hear from enforcement agencies," and treating my Google review + complaint as a criminal blackmail attempt. It’s left me shaken. I’ve now written a response asking them to:

• Retract the accusations
• Destroy my ID documents unless legally required
• Justify their data handling under UK GDPR
• Comply with the law around AML and GDPR disclosures

I’ve said if they don’t comply by 19 August, I’ll report them to the SRA, ICO and Legal Ombudsman. What else can I do to protect myself? Has anyone else experienced this kind of intimidation from a solicitor? Is it worth actually taking this to the police under harassment laws, or am I overreacting? I have a paper trail and am confident I’ve done nothing wrong, but I’m worried this could escalate or damage my name. Any legal or practical advice much appreciated – even just solidarity would help. This has genuinely shaken me. Thanks so much,

The OP was asking for advice so I have obliged - no need to be sarcastic.

At 10.08 @HotCrossBunplease said it was a "regulatory matter" hence my post.

Delete review, apologise. Drop it. You've majorly messed up here. This is not how you go about the legal system and I think the solicitor is entirely correct.

I agree. And a lot of commenters seem to have extreme faith in solicitors - I’ve found a number of dodgy shitty solicitors in the UK so can well believe they are just trying to scare the OP into taking down her bad review. I would be tempted to just ignore them. Asking for a refund for their lack of service (if that’s what the £150 was?) isn’t blackmail.

There was a Solicitor in the news recently who's been jailed for mortgage fraud along with an Accountant.

This is all AI generated. I'd suggest ignoring.

Did you pay anything to the first firm (considering that they refused to complete the document anyway)? If not I'm wondering why you want compensating for the second solicitor because you've still only paid for one, which was the original plan.

I'm a solicitor and there are plenty of shit solicitors out there - read the Law Gazette; some get struck off just about every week. So I can believe this happened and that they are talking crap. Your documents sound fine (not least because a second solicitor was fine with them). I imagine what happened was that they left you waiting with no apology and when you were tetchy with them they got defensive and were rude and dismissive of you which you further objected to. They didn't like being called out and found fault with your documents in order to refuse service and "punish" you.

Your review provided it was accurate is fair enough. Letter of complaint fair enough. Asking for £150 compensation is over egging things a bit (unless that is what you paid them for a job they refused to do) and if your complaint is considered further by a third party it doesn't really scream "moral high ground" and "reasonable". As you have witnessed, it has had quite an inflammatory effect.

If they are being as AGRESSIVD as OP says, they could be in a lot of trouble. The SRA don’t take kindly to solicitors throwing their weight around.

Again, the SRA won’t care.

they’re only interested in going after trainees who mess up their time recording. They’re a joke of an organisation

I also don’t think your message was rambly at all but it was too detailed for the situation and unnecessary to reference case law (which chat got does hallucinate sometimes so hopefully you double checked any references). If not sent yet but you’re still keen to make a response, I would simplify your message, delete case law etc and just say that if they contact you again you will report (rather than ask for any action on their side). Easier to make this go away by just stating any further contact will be considered harrasment - frankly who cares what they’re doing with your data or if they use your (address and name?) to train staff.

A shorter response will also make you look more reasonable and sane if it escalates - you should take the tone of “very normal woman who is totally surprised to receive such an egregious and dramatic letter after a simple request for a refund” rather than go in all guns blazing.

well Shakespeare said it first..... I brought plenty of popcorn so help yourselves everybody (settles comfortably into folding chair.)

By R v Ivey, I believe ChatGPT is referencing Ivey v Genting Casinos. Absolutely sound law, but my (loose) memory tells me it’s not got it spot on!

Actually, yes, looking at the OP, it does look like AI.

Really? I guess all the cases on the SRA and SDT are just made up guff, then.

So the second solicitors had to redraft the document because they would not witness the original just like the first firm?

In which case you would have incurred these charges anyway and can’t reclaim them from the first lot.

Of course it is a bit unreasonable to get frustrated with the first firm for refusing to witness what had to be redrafted by the second before they witnessed it.

The reason @Needtosoundoffandbreatheposted what they did is because there's been multiple references to the SRA. Then you come along and post a link to the SRA as if it was the first time it'd been mentioned.

You’d be surprised. I’ve had a solicitor try to intimidate me with a solicitor’s letter with no legal basis and then tell an outright lie to me and my solicitor. My solicitor said that it must have been a lie or the lying solicitor would have presented proof that would have settled the matter. This was also a personal matter to the lying solicitor, she wasn’t representing a client.

Obviously I don’t know the details of the OP’s situation, but all sorts of people can become solicitors. And people sometimes resort to lying and intimidation.

Yes but these accusations toward the OP seem to be clearly untrue and not likely to go anywhere (wouldn't they be a police matter?). It seems that they are using unfounded legalese to intimidate her, which is unprofessional, even if the OP has been a bit full on. Personally, I would give up on hopes of "compensation", ignore and report them to the ombudsman. Expect nothing to happen but there's no reason to be intimidated purely because another party is a solicitor. From personal experience, the "bad actor" solicitor I knew of, made all sorts of "official" legal threats/accusations, using her professional title and business details etc - didn't stop it from all being bullshit. Solicitors can be clowns and bullies just like anyone else.

I’m in the law (getting out because it’s just so bad!). They will ignore really egregious things, but go after really minor things. It takes a lot to get the SRA properly het up.

So "great minds think alike" it seems !

Please tell me you didn’t send the ChatGPT response in your second post on this thread, OP (I’d quote for clarity…but it’s a bloody novel).

Has anyone with genuine legal knowledge even proof-read it, to check for AI hallucinations/fabrications/bizarre misunderstandings? Anyone with expert-level knowledge in an area who has tested to see whether ChatGPT can keep up (it can’t, at all) will tell you it just spouts wildly inaccurate nonsense in a confident tone. Don’t use AI for legal advice, especially if you’re arguing with lawyers!

Ok. All I can say is there are plenty of investigations published that address behavioyr far worse than trainees fucking up their time keeping.

You could have resolved this in a satisfactory way but because you jumped in both feet first you have fucked up royally.

What you should have done -

1. not gone to another firm straightaway but contacted the original firm to allow them the opportunity to rectify their mistakes. If they were unable to do so then it would be reasonable for you to go to another firm to complete the job.

2. wrote a letter of complaint just stating the basic facts to the original firm, possibly stating in the letter that you are now £150 out of pocket due to having to go to another firm because of poor service. However that was YOUR choice to go to another firm and be out of pocket so you are not entitled to compensation from the original firm for this. As someone else has stated you technically don't need a solicitor to witness a deed poll so you still made the choice to pay another £150 when you didn't need to and so are not entitled to this from the original firm. They may decide to pay you compensation as a goodwill gesture but you have no right to demand it of them. You then wait for their reply.

3. Depending on the nature of their reply you could possibly also have sent a complaint to the SRA if they were unreasonable and refusing to acknowledge their poor service.

What you should not have done was the nuclear option of publicly complaining about your experience by writing a negative Google review before allowing the firm the chance to put things right, and then demanding £150 compensation after writing a negative Google review. You also certainly should not send that embarrassing ChatGPT word salad of a letter to them either.

What you should now do -

1. delete the Google review

2. apologise to the original firm and say you have retracted your review and demand for compensation. That doesn't mean that they are in the right but the way you have gone about things means that you have screwed it up for yourself and this is now your most sensible option to avoid any further repercussions for yourself.

You’re being an arse.

You can either choose to invest further time in being an arse, or draw a line under it and move on.

Asking for compensation for an appointment delay is quite frankly ridiculous.

If the new solicitor is redrafting then there’s clearly something that needs doing to it, so your original solicitors point that something needed doing with it was correct.

If the house name is also a term that is used for other purposes, and using it as short form has the potential to be misleading then the original solicitors was reasonable to challenge that. (Using your Croft example, it could be a house name, but it’s also a legally defined property status, if what’s being referred to isn’t actually a Croft then that approach could be construed to be misleading).

If you’ve found a solicitor you can work with, you probably won’t want to draw their attention to you being difficult as a client. If you pursue your complaint to the SRA then they’ll become aware of it.

The unanswered question is why did the first solicitor refuse to sign?

did they have legal concerns ?