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?

MOS - we don't do anything as complicated as time recording. That would only have a point if the LSC had any intention of paying us for the time we actually spent.

You can share my pen though - I stole it from a police officer.

Good point re: CPD. It might be my only chance of actually making my CPD total this year - hopefully they will think I went on maternity leave earlier than I actually did.....

ooh, can I have the cheese grater? I seem to have lost/misplaced mine in a recent move

Hmm. What do you have to offer in exchange?

kingfu you got maternity leave! I was out from June 6th through October 18th and DD was born on July 6th. I was moved and my desk purged of all stationary items I can carefully collected during the prior two years of working here. My stapler doesn't bloody work and they won't order me a new one. Luckily I got the inside scoop that someone handed in their notice so stayed back and picked through their stationary pile!

MOSagain ha ha, having read it back, it's worse than I originally thought!

realhousewife I am not a lawyer, and not working in the legal profession either. You are during so many questions and insults off it is hard to keep up and explain to you the different situations. Law is a very very diverse profession where many different solicitors and barristers work with the most diverse cross section of society. Again, Legal Aid is a small aspect of it, and LA work remains the only facit of the profession which is directly funded byvthe government.

Problem with LA is that the rates of pay have historically been low to afford access to justice so many firms are making slim profit margins (ie you REALLY have to want to do it) but as the budgets are being cut, margins have gone altogether and firms are operating at a loss.

Now to your statement regarding where the profits go. Actually not just to the retired partners at the top of the tree, but all retired employees of the firm, right down to the security hard on the front desk.

If you want an answer to a question, refrain from going off on a ranting tangent and insulting comments about someone's livlihoods - its rather purile. You may disagree with the systems the legal profession but this is an adult forum, not a playground.

If you want to ask sensible questions and have a reasoned debate ask good questions. Otherwise I shall be borrowing kungfu's spare desk and start banging my head.

I still want to know who the big City firms should be accountable to...

Am I going to come into work tomorrow to find my office full of head-banging randomers?

Ultimately their clients I guess, but regulated in England and Wales by SRA and or Law Society. It's really a semi-regulated private enterprise which must adhear to professioal codes of conduct.

Could it be that it is regulated by clients in the way we are supposed to have individual and collective ministerial responsibility if you see what I mean? I.e. clients hold the firm to account for misconduct or a pants service?

And want2bsupermum - I don't have a stapler (although I do have my suspicions about where it went) but I do have 2 large hole-punches. You are welcome to one of them - but neither of them have the positioning guide thingy still attached.

I may just be a high street solicitor, but I have a four hole puncher in my office. Or I did before I went on maternity leave and my office was given to a new conveyancing paralegal. Not sure where I will sit when I go back. Perhaps our archaic office is about to have an experiment with hotdesking. Oh the humanity.....

Who should big city firms be accountable to? At the end of the day, they are just partnerships (except if they're LLPs), like any other partnership - lawyers, accountants, builders, hairdressers. It's just a type of business structure, all be it one that is used more by "professions" than other types of businesses.

So, in the same way that companies are accountable to their owners - shareholders, partnerships are accountable to their owners - the partners, no matter if it's a two partner high stree firm or a 200 partner Magic Circle firm.

Oh, and I hide my stationary when I'm on holiday. My felt tip pen collection is second to none (property lawyers need to do a certain amount of colouring in - best bit of the job), so I don't want my collegues nicking them

I was harking back to this from page 8 (sorry if you already realised that, just want to be clear what I'm referring to) - by realhousewife

"Blimey - I go out to do some poorly paid work and come back to being completely misunderstood by a bunch of professional people who can't do maths and certainly can't be fair and honest, that say the likes of this

(what I said): "Who do you think the big City law firms should be accountable to? Genuinely curious, not being snippy - I would think if the clients are happy to pay then why does it matter to anyone else? Of course, if the client is a government body spending taxpayers' money then that is different and the government (not the firm) should be able to justify their legal spend."

You have reaffirmed my poor opinion of the legal profession. If anyone has anything constructive to say about the original post, feel free. £27,000 is a decent wage outside London."

Apparently, suggesting that the people paying the fees should be the ones who hold big firms accountable is an outrageous thing to say and brings the entire profession into disrepute. I am still over that one!

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. This is not going to get anywhere is it. Palpable hostility is something I'm not intending to get used to.

realhousewife it isn't going to get anywhere because you are happy to throw out outrageous statements about the probity of an entire profession but won't engage with the responses explaining the issues you query, which have been measured, polite and informative.

Oh this is clearly a wind-up.

Unless anyone has any more decent stationery-related banter I am off.

If the lawyers stopped forming arguments this thread would have died by now. I have mastered the art of pleasantly agreeing with DH and then doing exactly what I wanted to do. I have also mastered the art of delivering a somewhat terse "you're in the kitchen darling, not in court - do top me up"

forming arguments? We'd moved onto stationery envy.

I would like the record to show that I actually prefer a single hole punch, much easier for putting documents on the Court pin.

Apols - don't understand much of what DH rambles on about in detail and at length - probably a good idea otherwise I might be retailing the equivalent of state secrets

I always liked photocopiers that staples documents as it stopped the faffage with collating and then trying to find my (lost) stapler.

Ah, but MOSagain, the LSC don't like single punched files.

They like all your papers to line up perfectly with double-punching. Otherwise they mark you down on your audit.

Although they have recently conceded that we can recycle old files which they previously Did Not Approve Of.

kungfu I could swop you a double hole punch for cheese grater, I seem to have acquired/appropriated two

Do they have the paper guide thingy on them?

[ponders the offer]

one has