To think that lawyers should not charge by the hour?

[DMAGA]

I have recently been represented in an unfair dismissal case by a firm of lawyers who told me that they could help me and then did f* all. The partner charged £400 per hour, his assistant £250 per hour, the consultant £350 per hour and then I was charged for all of them having 'discussions' about my case. They ran up a bill of £200k without achieving anything and, because my case was in the Employment Tribunal, the Tribunal would not have awarded me my costs even if the matter had gone ahead to trial and i had won (which would have cost me another £300k). In the end, I sacked them and reached a satisfactory agreement with my employer on my own, but all of my settlement monies have been spent on paying my lawyers. What other jobs are remunerated by the hour which means, in effect, the more inefficient you are and the longer you take to do the job, the more you will get paid. It's bonkers, isn't it? Does anyone actually like lawyers? Don't they just thrive on other people's misfortunes?

If you think that the charges were unfair and extortionate you can raise a formal objection and if you are unhappy with the solicitors response you can apply to have the invoices taxed/apply for detailed assessment. I think there may be strict time limits about how quickly you must object and commence detailed assessment.

So ....... Was there no point on the way to spending £200k where you thought that it was not worth it and you could have called a halt to their involvement?

Presumably there are much cheaper law firms out there. Why did you go for this one?

there are crap lawyers, police, teachers, accountants, care workers and more. there are also good ones. Anything run by humans is flawed. But dont you just hate it when you get the bad ones? £400 per hour makes no sense to me, even if they do their job quick and well. There are plenty who work very hard all week and dont earn that.

£400 an hour isn't going to the individual, but the firm, covering salaries or support staff as well as other overheads including office space.

'for' support staff, not 'or'.

I'm a lawyer. I spend most of my time negotiating terms for the sale of tv programmes. Not quite sure how that means I'm thriving on other people's misfortunes but I'll take your word for it.

Nesbo
Given the quality of most TV programmes that is exactly what I would call it

Garages charge by the hour but they don't pay the staff that money. Legal redress may be the perogative of the rich. ut, if you have studied hard to get your Law degree then work your way to partner then would you let your skills go 'cheap'?

In answer to the OP. Did you realise when you went into this that you could not be awarded costs? Did you have any discussion with your team about the costs and how they were maounting up?

I'm a lawyer too, and charge by the hour. How would you rather we charge?

(Would love to "thrive" by the way... spend most of my time hand holding (for free!) when dealing with bereaved clients, made enough to pay our bills and staff last year, but not enough to cover my childcare...)

I worked for a firm of lawyers, the same one Sir Alan Sugar used to sue Terry Venables etc. The hourly rates of Partners, senior associates, etc were the same to that you mention - did you need to use such a prestigous law firm? If it was just basic legal advice you needed, you could probably have got it a lot cheaper.

What was set out in the engagement letter regarding fees and remit? Did you sign an engagement letter?

If not, tell them to sing for it

And they don't generally charge by the hour, but in 6 minute increments of which 10 make up an hour. This means if they have a 15 minute phonecall on your behalf you pay just for that, etc. Fees should be itemised and able to be broken down to each 6 minute increment unless otherwise stated in your engagement letter and their terms and conditions.

Yet another mn thread lawyer bashing Lawyers do not get the full amount that they charge per hour-as someone else points out that is money they are bringing in for the whole company from which they will draw a salary or get a share of any profits.

With the legal aid bill being slashed then many lawyers are doing far more work for far less money. Now before someone flames me and points out that lawyers earn good money-well yes I suppose in comparison to average wage they do. However they also work hard for it-spend years at uni then have to try and obtain a traineeship,like gold dust nowadays-for which they are paid pennies. They also have to work long hours and certainly in scotland with the new cadder ruling they can be on call 24 hours!

Btw I dont believe you have represented the full picture with regards to your case...

I recently used a firm of solicitors, well thought of locally. Using a brain cell, I asked how much the job would cost (it was not litigation) and knocked the price down to what I was prepared to pay. This was last year and, in November, before the matter was concluded, I received a letter suggesting that I pay before the end of the year so that the increase in VAT due in January was avoided. The matter was not concluded until about August this year.

There are some decent companies out there.

Meh.

Law is a service, not a product. The amount it costs depends on how good the lawyer is multiplied by how long it takes. It's not complicated. Nor is it compulsory.

Trip to the grip shop needed?

Sounds like a pretty big national firm with those kind of chargeout rates. I'm suprised that it got as much as circa £200k if you aren't happy with the service you were being provided with (and you should have been consulted with regards to case developments and fee estimates). Odd that they took on what seems like a 50/50 case, spent huge amounts of fees, decided the case wasn't worth pursuing (which is ultimately YOUR call anyway) and you settled on your own. I'm slightly confused as this seems to be at odds to what the legal system depicts...

Thanks for your replies. Once you are involved in litigation you can't just get out of it. My lawyers said that I had to issue my claim within 3 months or I would be out of time, so I didn't really have any choice. They told me the cost would be about £15k and that we would go to mediation. they then said that I couldn't go to mediation because I wasn't well enough (I suffered from quite serious depression). My point is that shouldn't lawyers be paid for the job, like anyone else. I know that if I take my car to the garage to be fixed, they will charge me for the time spent. I don't have a problem with that because they will tell me in advance how many hours it will take: but my lawyers didn't do that, they said it was going to be £x and then it was 13 x £X. And why should I pay for three of them to be talking about my claim - it means I am being charged for three people to do the job which one person is already charging a lot of money to do the job. Sorry if I seem a bit negative, but I can't help but think that my interests were treated as secondary to my lawyers' own interests in milking me for as much as they could get.

200k on an unfair dismissal case? That seems pretty unrealistic to me. That is a great many hours of time. Were they not sending you regular bills so you could so how much they were running up as the case went on, giving you an opportunity to nip it in the bud?

I am a lawyer and often work on cases where the fees run into millions but they are cases that run for years and often have many more millions at stake so the cost is proportionate. And we are often ground down on fees these days. More and more clients are getting us to do work on fixed fees, which in some ways is good but can mean that if we get the budget wrong a whole team can be working for most of the year for free.

I get to see somewhere between 1/3 and 1/10th of the fees I generate, btw (depending on how busy I am as my salary is fixed and not linked to the amount of hours I work). My hourly rate covers the firm's overheads, my secretary's time, etc. And the partners' profits of course.

If you are not happy with the service you received then complain to the relevent body-the law society if you are in scotland.

I do not believe that your lawyers told you that your case would cost £15,000 and then presented you with a bill for £200,000. Sorry not buying it. If the costs you were incurring were rising then your lawyers would have informed you of that. They dont let people run up huge bills without advising them as they dont want to then run the risk of the client refusing to pay/being unable to pay.

In answer to your question-do lawyers benefit from the misfortune of others?-dont talk bollox.

Crossed posts. It's normal for lawyers to discuss complex cases between team members. In your job, if more than one person is working on something, you must see the team needs to discuss the best approach, who is doing what, etc.

But if you were given a quote and the bill is 13 times that quote, it sounds like you have grounds for a complaint to the firm. Costs can rise for many reasons (most frequently in my experience either due to my own client's behaviour or the behaviour of the client on the other side) but you should have been kept informed of any changes to the budget and billed regularly throughout.

Look at your retainer letter and they should have included their complaints procedure policy. You then make a complaint using their procedure and if they don't reply do you within 8 weeks, you can make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman for free. The firm, however, will get charged a £400 handling fee (unless they are 'innocent' or took reasonable steps etc etc).

Frankly, you should have queried when the fees were racking up.

The firm can only tell you a likely projected estimate. If you're suffering from depression, that's a complicating factor that may only have become a factor mid-way through proceedings and so resulted in a longer case.

And before you say the service is inefficient, you have NO idea of the legal system and how time consuming it is. The judicial system has a lot of delay, Woolf reforms or not. This isn't necessarily a firm trying to take you for everything.

Also, you sound like a nightmare client. You go for a hostile mode of action against your employers, instruct lawyers and then settle out of court with the defendant? Sounds more like you got arsey and then backed out. Vexatious litigant and all.

You insinuate your lawyer was pressuring you re the claim form. Yeah, thanks to the Civil Procedure Rules, he/she can't exactly lie about that.

You also feel it's unnecessary for the team to discuss your case? If they didn't, I'm sure you would be shouting 'negligence'. Those 3 people do not all fill the same roles. They work other cases too, you know; so they have to meet to consolidate the game plan and their tactics.

In giving you an estimate, they can't predict the future. The defendant could have delayed or applied for a million extensions of time - that increases your costs too.

thanks. I have complained and the firm has paid me compensation after I went to the LCS. I am also receiving a big chunk of fees back after the insurers became involved, so to that extent there is some sort of resolution. However, I am still left feeling disappointed and let down that when I really needed my lawyers to be on my side and to fight my corner they were only interested inthe 'bottom line'. Sorry, I don't like lawyers in general. I am sure that some must be ok, but most seem to be shallow and materialistic, TBH.

Of course they should charge for meetings they have about your matter. It takes up time where they could be doing something else. They can also charge for reading in, letters, phonecalls, etc. Certain things have to be run by a Partner before they can proceed...its complicated. I agree £200k is a bit much but there has to be more to it than that.

And those rates are magic-circle rates.

By all means represent yourself in the future then.

My observation is that individuals deal with lawyers either in times of stress (estates, employment issues, neighbour disputes, divorce etc) or in times of excitement (buying a new house etc, setting up a business etc).
In times of stress we just want the problem to get sorted quickly. In times of happiness we just want an uncomplicated transaction. It's never that easy and we resent the complications and cost. Hardly the fault of lawyers - but it's not surprising that they are regarded my many as a "necessary evil".