This resonates so much with what my brother went through!! His first solicitor wasn't interested in fighting his case and just said he should give everything to his ex wife!
The second solicitor was constantly just wasting his money...he was paying him £2,000 a month!! All his solicitor was doing was sending 'chaser' letters , my brother got really fed up and said "why am I paying you when I can chase the ex wife's solicitor myself?". He spoke to another solicitor who said "yeah your getting ripped off, why doesn't your solicitor just schedule a meeting with your ex wife and you can have this resolved"
So my brother spoke to his solicitor and mentioned this and his solicitor replied "No its better we continue this way...if it takes another 9/10 months of sending chasers its better then you paying for my day rate and we might not get anything done"
My brother replied "so your sayings its better for me to spend £2,000 every month for 10 months instead of £1,000 for your day rate which could result in this being resolved in one day"
His solicitor replied "yes you don't want to alienate anyone!"
So he got rid of this solicitor and went with the one who gave him the advice..anyway he hired them and they totally backtracked on what they said...they played the same game as the second solicitor when he wanted to get rid of them the solicitor got really angry and started bullying him saying "you can't do this divorce alone you need me!!"
My brother then used a free website called wikivorce which helped him a lot...he saved a lot of money and pretty much brought the divorce to an end in 3 months by himself compared to 10 months what the other solicitor mentioned!!
Anyway my parents told him to get a proper solicitor to check his consent order and the same thing happened...he told the solicitor from the start "I just want you to check the consent order and explain it to me". The solicitor told him but then she started bullying him again by saying " you don't know what your doing its better we handle it for you, we will charge you around £7,500" , when he asked her to justify this cost she said "£7,500 to submit the consent order and raise the final order" he felt really bullied and scared as she kept saying "you won't be able to do this as you don't have access to our systems". Anyway he stopped responding to her and asked for a refund of his £500 deposit minus the cost of the 1 hour meeting. The solicitor came back and said "you owe me an extra £250", he asked for a breakdown of billing and apparently she spent £400+ on reviewing the document "in her own time", so in total he paid £750 to have a 4 page consent order reviewed!!
If anyone asks me for a good solicitor now I just tell them "they are pretty much all the same and just want to rip you off" in my brothers case none of them wanted to help him resolve things quickly...they were all difficult to get hold of, didn't reply to emails, didn't respond to his calls, it was a lot of stress. He says the best thing he did in this divorce was representing himself as it allowed him to be in control of the situation!