Solicitor fees

[Pedrapas]

Could anyone help with solicitor fees please. I have been charged in total £86 just for my solicitor writing to me to tell me that they were going on Christmas break. £23 consideration time to send me email. £23 to send email to me. £23 to read my reply of thanks, will catch up in January and a further £23 to consider my reply? I also have an issue that they are increasingly using trainees and my bill is increased due to the time it is taking them to draft an email- I am then being charged by solicitor whilst they read trainees draft and consider it. Is this standard practice I have a bill of £1200 for 18 emails, no meetings, no telephone calls and to add it is not a complex case at all.

Honestly it's crazy how high solicitor's fees can be. It's so wrong and shouldn't be draining people of their savings just to get a divorce. I actually remember being in disbelief when I saw how high mine got. I just couldn't keep doing it. Luckily though there are online resources that can help which really saved me during my divorce so I'll leave it here in case it can help you sort out your divorce yourself, or at least help you do some of it yourself to save some money as your divorce isn't complex. https://iamlip.com/
I hope this can help! xx

Yes, although mine was 10years ago and it was 18.00a time. It cost 23k in the end

Hi, they charge £200 plus an hour even thinking about your case.
we can argue about how high it is, but How do you think they’ll earn their wage? A garage doesn’t just charge for time they’re under your car fixing it, they’ll charge for time to find the fault, order the parts, rent the workshop, pay the business rates, pay fuel builds etc etc. they’ll not just charge for physical output you can see and use.

Anita848 has sent you a link she often posts with. I’ll do what I do often which is point you to link above in header to ADVICE NOW website. They have guides to walk you through all the processes as “diy” as much as possible. Tell you tasks that you do need solicitors for, what you don’t and when you might.

small fee on some of guides, but they’re brilliant. ADVICE NOW saved me £1000s. And stopped my divorce dragging for months like so many people here who post.

you do not have to use a solicitor . But they’ll generally not tell you that ! Advice now is drawn up by English law legal experts who WILL point out that

as Anita says, inform yourself. Read up. Avoid using as much as you can, do the main work yourself. It’s not actually that hard unless youand STBex are at war , and even then sharing the guides with him can help in getting to a ceasefire and negotiation.

btw, solicorts are actually just fine you rocking up and saying “I only want you to do this task “. Mine congratulated me and exh on how organised we were and how quick it all went through.

they’re not bad people. Mine was lovely. But they have a living to make. And people , especially women, don’t have confidence to believe they can handle most of it by themselves.

You can complain to your solicitor if you feel ripped off. Some solicitors are good and reasonable, others are rip off merchants. Charging to tell you they won’t be around at Christmas sounds like a piss take to me. Maybe tell them you won’t be paying for that - they could have sent an auto email that would have done the job. And push to agree a fixed cost divorce. If they won’t agree, it may be time to move to one who will agree more fixed fees.

One I went to, I swear just looked at how much money I had and thought they would help themselves to a chunk at a vulnerable time for me. I wasn’t having that so switched to others. The others weren’t great either but lesser rip off merchants than the first.

solicitors who do a good job are worth their weight in gold. Not all are good but better to get legal advice than not. If your solicitor won’t play ball you can threaten to complain about them to the solicitors regulation authority, they have rules re fees I think.

Why don't you send them a bill for the same amount in reply to their letter/email.

Your time is just as valuable and if its not relevant to your case then you shouldn't repaying for it.

Imagine if they have 100 clients, that's £8600 to send a group email saying they are going on holiday!!

Until they open your email they don't know what it is going to say so don't send emails saying thanks.

Solicitors charge for time spent and the minimum charge I was allowed to charge was 6 minutes. So if I thought about a case for one second as they sent me an email, the client gets charged for the cost of 6 minutes. Sounds to me like the cost of 6 minutes of your solicitor’s time is £23.

So, never do small talk or polite chit chat with a solicitor unless you’re on a fixed fee. Never send an email just to say thanks.

That said, here you were charged several times over for a tiny amount of basic admistration work that could and should have been done by a non fee-earner, such as a secretary. The problem is that your lawyer does not have enough casework and so is doing admin crap themselves instead of delegating it, and charging you the absolute maximum amount of time they think they can justify on their timesheet. That helps them fill the hole on their timesheet (solicitors have to find someone to pay for each 6 minutes of their time, or explain to the firm why they can’t) but it’s not good for you.

Make a formal complaint to whoever at the firm is in charge of client complaints, this person will be listed in the terms of engagement letter you were sent when you hired them. Say that, while you appreciate that solicitors charge on an hourly basis, solicitors should not be charging you for basic administrative tasks that should have been done by a non fee-earner, and that even if a solicitor was needed to do these tasks, the amount of time that has been allocated here to a couple of seconds worth of work is concerning to you. Say you are not happy and wish to make a formal complaint about how time recording is being done on your file.

@Appleofmyeye2023 £200 an hour mine was £400+ and each email was flat fee of £25 even just to tell me they had received my email!
Its extortion and the only people that could overhaul the system, are the people who profit from it. I found that at the end of the day, they weren't even the solicitor in court and I felt the connection that solicitor made with the judge was important, but you won't know that until you are there,.one of my barristers was terrible and i was embarrassed for them at how ineffective they were and i hate the fact you dont get the same judge and you are forced to pay to go three times in order to get a judge to decide and even then in my case all three judges when giving their views on how they would have ruled had vastly different outcomes. The only positive about the vast hourly cost was it made every other luxury thing feel relatively cheap, I used to pay for items and then just equate it in terms of 'oh thats only 2 hours of solicitors time'

If OP makes a formal complaint, won't that cost yet more solicitor time? And if the firm drops her, won't she pay for yet more solicitor time to get a new solicitor firm to take care of the especially complex case?

Paying for the trainees to have their work reviewed does seem off, though.

ADVICE NOW is run as charity by solicitor who feel law should be free and accessible where it is simple to navigate…simple divorces is one such process
so not all solicitors…

and to be fair…solicitors need offices or premises, corp tax, membership fees, system support, admin support, etc etc…it’s not cheap as a business….

but, yep, £400 seems high, but was that down south? I’m in northwest, and in 2021 my solicitors charged £210 inc vat.

our combined legal fee for amicable divorce was around £1400 inc vat and court costs. We did most of it ourselves through ADVICE NOWs guides…

but ..the issue comes when people can’t or won’t agree settlements between themselves and court proceedings needed…money then is going up in smoke and I do wonder in some cases did they come out any better off frankly?

You shouldn't charge for supervision (otherwise the senior person might as well have do done it, and it's to be expected that a junior may take longer to do things).
You can't charge for both reading and considering an email - particularly a short email.

So do challenge this.

Do not fall into the trap of responding with a "thanks" because they will charge you.

Also do not fall into the trap of sending lots of short emails. When this happens I bunch short exchanges together and charge the actual time spent but virtually every solicitor I know will charge separately for each one. So save up your questions to ask in one email all together. Likewise when you are asked for info - give it all at once, not piecemeal and all in proper order with nothing missing.

Also remember your lawyer is not a therapist. Don't fall into the trap of confiding in them. Only seek advice where it is legally necessary.

By following these simple steps you will save yourself a lot of money.

Also when you go to court ask who is going with you. If yours is not a "big money" case you do not need the trainee as well as the more senior fee earner. It's common where I practise for the solicitor to often not attend hearings and just send the client with the barrister (if costs are an issue and no surprises are expected).

You cannot charge for dealing with complaints