Barrister vs. solicitor

[IllEagle]

I have been trying to claim a sum of money from a company.

It is a somewhat specialist subject.

I found a solicitor online who had published on this subject, and he recommended a local lawyer to me.

Unfortunately this solicitor was transferred out of the department, and it was replaced with another solicitor. This replacement solicitor has been very slow (over a year now dealing with the case), and I'm not convinced that he is confident about my case, nor that he has a full understanding of the subject matter, nor a confident command of the facts.

Anyway, having failed to get an acceptable settlement agreed, the solicitor has recommend seeking an opinion from a barrister as to the chances of success. Apparently this will cost a couple of grand, plus a little under half that for the solicitor to essentially compile the documents I sent to him and the correspondence between the company and my solicitor.

I contacted the solicitor who originally wrote the article I found online, and he has recommended a barrister to do the merits assessment.

I have yet to contact this barrister, but I'm just wondering what I should do.

Do I

(a) compile the bundle of documents and directly instruct the barrister to do this assessment, without paying anything over to the solicitor? Will the barrister work on this basis?
and then either
(i) sack the solicitor entirely and just work with the barrister in terms of future negotiations with the company and with likely future legal action in the High Court (is this possible?)
or
(ii) keep the solicitor option open, but not till I have had an opinion from the barrister

(b) just pass this barrister's details onto my solicitor as a suggested option and allow him to compile the case details for the barrister (or another) to do the case.

Why can't you transfer your instructions to the online solicitor? You're not doing yourself any favours involving 2 solicitors, as you've ended up lacking a real sense of where you should be heading. Instruct the solicitor whose opinion you trust.

Some barristers are authorised to take instructions direct from the client without a solicitor in between. It's a fairly new thing, and so not that many have done the extra course, but if you contact the barrister's chambers, they can tell you whether this one can take instructions in this way.

If you choose to/have to use a solicitor as well, I echo Collaborate's opinion. Stick with the one you trust.

The solicitor whom I trust, and has given me lots of free advice, including suggesting this barrister, doesn't deal with litigation. I think he speaks at conferences, writes articles, and advises companies on particular areas of law.

So I can't instruct that solicitor.

I suggest then that you follow "the cat's" advice by speaking to the head of chambers of your preferred barrister.

The barrister has said that he can potentially provide advice but can only take instructions from a solicitor or Ltd Company Secretary.

I have two options at this point:

• either deal directly with this one particular barrister for an opinion, preparing the documents myself; if the opinion it is positive, pass this opinion back to my solicitor to make further instructions
• or, pass the name of the barrister to my solicitor, who said he would make enquiries with various barristers to give a number of options - possibly better than mine? and allow him to prepare the documents for this barrister to deal with

Obviously if I go for option 1, I am cutting out my current solicitor out of the task of preparing the documents for the barrister, but then still expecting him to potentially issue instructions to that barrister.

Is this likely to cause a problem, or should a solicitor accept my right to engage this expert opinion myself?