Ex P's solicitor behaving unprofessionally?

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ExP's solicitor was tasked with collating the bundle for court. At a directions hearing the court ordered police and medical disclosure amongst other things. I have provided everything the Judge asked, however the solicitor representing ex has tried to keep certain evidence that helps my case out of the bundle. In fact she has blatantly missed out random pages from professional reports which contain the most relevant pieces of evidence against my abusive ex P. Photographic evidence that I filed has also been scanned so it's completely unclear. Is this a typical tactic for solicitors when up against a LIP or is she just unscrupulous?

My experience in assisting people in court (I am a McKenzie Friend) shows this to be very common.

Solicitors have a duty to assist litigants in person: www.lawsociety.org.uk/advice/practice-notes/litigants-in-person/

Also worth bearing in mind is that the bundle index should be agreed `where possible' (check Practice Direction 27A) although it is common for a solicitor preparing the bundle to say that it hasn't been agreed and then going on to write it themselves ignoring the litigant in persion.

However it is unlikely to help your case. The best you can hope for if you turn up in court with a bundle that omits your evidence, etc. is to ask for an adournment and the worst is that it goes ahead with you having no evidence to rely on.

I have experience of both happening...with the latter more common than the former.

In practical terms, when a solicitor does this I advise my clients to inform the solicitor that they have failed to comply with Practice Direction and advise the court of this...although once again as I say very little happens. I then assist them preparing their OWN bundle (so the court has two - not good I know, but the alternative is going with the other party's one as I state above).

There is a tight timetable when it comes to bundle preparation so make sure you are aware of it and get it done and copies handed to the court and other party in time.

my (25) year experience as a solicitor has taught me that pages are more often left out of bundles as a result of incompetence, inefficiency or just bad luck or mistake rather than as result of conspiracy. if there are things missing you can always provide them as additions to the bundle, paginated obviously.

If you seriously think that the solicitor has done this deliberately, then you need to complain. This is appalling behaviour.

Ask for the complaints manager at the firm.
www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/category/making-a-complaint-about-a-professional/

I don't know any judge who would be happy with two different bundles being in circulation. Duff bundles make hearings much more difficult than they need to be. Sadly, bundle preparation seems to be very low down on people's priority lists when I think it is one of the most important and necessary things to do well to make a hearing run smoothly.

I wouldn't turn up asking for an adjournment, instead it would be far better to:
A) write/email solicitor and notify them if the missing pages
B) turn up with spare copies of the missing pages.

practice direction on family bundles

I agree with Twattock about the incompetence. That's overwhelmingly my experience. Bundles are often/usually prepared by non legally qualified staff who may have no personal interest in the case at all. I've never met a solicitor I thought was likely to be dishonest to the extent you suspect here, although I accept it is possible.

Spero - `I don't know any judge who would be happy with two different bundles being in circulation.'

Circumstances mean a lot of the LIPs I assist have a choice between potentially upsetting the judge and entering a trial with no evidence whatsoever.

My personal experience that it's a rare case where bundle preparation DOES go smoothly. The number of cases I have been involved in where that is the case are in single figures. I advise my clients to work on the principle that there WILL be problems because I don't want them worrying that come the time for a bundle there will be nothing to rely on.

There IS sharp practice but there is also laziness and incompetence. I'd advise any client of mine who is unhappy with the way things go not to bother complaining - the SRA are unlikely to do anything, a complaint to the other party's solicitor will almost certainly be ignored and Resolution have a zero figure when it comes to upholding complaints. Judges are similarly disinterested and want to deal with the matter in hand and not what they see as squabbling over paperwork.

Making a complaint will often mean that a LIP, usually overrun with work, correspondence and paperwork preparation, is merely diverted from the main event of seeking to remain in their childrens' lives.

Don't get me wrong - I know there is good and bad everywhere. I DO work with solicitors and barristers I have a lot of respect for but I am aghast at what goes on when a bundle is involved and the lack of knowledge when it comes to fundamentals on this.

My ex's solicitor 'left things' out of the finances which she sent to me, making it look as though his essential outgoing were far more than they really were, so it would have reduced his maintenance liability. I questioned this in court (I was representing myself, child maintenance hearing as he's not in the UK), I don't think the magistrates were impressed. From what I gather from a solicitor friend of mine it's quite common. There's been some useful advice given on here though.

If ever a bundle is defective, we have to have an adjournment to sort it out - for either an hour or whole morning. To try and conduct cross examination with two competing bundles sounds like a recipe for disaster and it has never happened to me in 15 years.

Sadly I suspect bundle preparation is often left to a 14 year old on work experience - I have had pages missing, photos copied so they are so faint they can't be seen, mis pagination etc, etc. It causes chaos. But it takes time and effort to out a decent bundle together.

It is going to be a bloodbath in my cases when it's two litigants in person and two lots of carrier bags with loose papers arriving at court. Don't quite know how the courts think LIPs are going to follow the practice direction which is onerous enough for established practitioners.

Ex's solicitor was nothing but obstructive. She started by demanding information from me which wasn't relevant and I was told not to give them to her by the court; then she gave me incorrect details concerning the ex and his finances; then she gave the court the wrong date for which the forms were filled, meaning they calculated the arrears incorrectly. She didn't have a bundle with her so spend time faffing around with bits of paper and going 'erm...' a lot. Some of them are shit.

babybarrister - exactly my experience. The `Those documents aren't relevant' is something I have heard of a few times. I've also seen examples of the other party preparing a bundle without a word to the LIP and if the LIP is lucky they'll be handed a copy just before going in to see a judge.

Handing in a bundle to the Judge that you haven't shown the other side is absolutely wrong and no Judge I have ever met would allow that to happen in any circumstances whatsoever.

Normally, the index to the bundle is agreed well in advance and copies of the bundle circulated before the hearing. If the LIP won't agree to pay photocopying costs then he/she absolutely should get a copy of the index so he/she can make up his own bundle.

I must have lead a very sheltered legal life; I would never dream of trying to submit a bundle the other side hadn't seen and I can't imagine any court tolerating that for a single solitary second. Its a flagrant and serious breach of Article 6 of the ECHR for a start.

I suppose it's difficult to prove that it wasn't human error, however it's interesting that the missing pages are the ones most damning to ExP's case.

One document states that ExP showed his family court statement to a third party (not related to the proceedings). This is contempt of court isn't it? I wasn't planning to raise it, but it's interesting that the evidence of him doing this has been missed from the main bundle.

I produced a supplementary bundle with additional evidence and was granted permission to file, even though his solicitor had tried to stop this (I'd previously also sent a copy to her).

I put together a separate index, complied everything in chronological order to follow the schedule of facts to find and paginated the pages. It's taken me bloody ages and it's frustrating that the main bundle which of course I also refer to, is all over the place.

When producing the Scott schedule, I referred to evidence that should have been in the main bundle, however pages of documents were missing. I therefore had to include them in my supplementary bundle. Rather than cause the judge to alternate between bundles in order to read the full document, I simply included the non redacted versions in my supplementary bundle (paginated to follow my numbering). I'd appreciate advice on if this is acceptable?

The bottom line is that the relevant evidence on which you rely must be disclosed in advance and included in the bundle.

There is no way I would agree to start a hearing if the other side had evidence they had not shown me, and no judge has ever asked me to. We adjourn - for half an hour, an hour, all morning - until everyone has a chance to read the evidence.

But it doesn't often happen as we agree bundle index in advance.

Dashoflime - it sounds like you have done the best you can. Yes, showing docs to third parties is probably breach of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 but I think judges are unlikely to get too excited about that unless it was a really serious breach. Showing one doc to one person will probably get nothing more than a raised eyebrow.

Sadly I suspect bundle preparation is often left to a 14 year old on work experience - I have had pages missing, photos copied so they are so faint they can't be seen, mis pagination etc, etc. It causes chaos. But it takes time and effort to out a decent bundle together.

Presumably the clients are billed at a vastly reduced rate then? Because I imagine the majority of people having to pay for legal representation assume that the person who is representing them would be either doing it or keeping a very close eye on it.

I wouldn't pay 50p for some of the bundles I get and I hope clients complain and get a reduction on their bill.

Bundle preparation is always...special.

It's a good job I have a decent coffee maker and the ability to work into the small hours.

It can be hard to appreciate how much work goes into a decent bundle unless you've had the pleasure of putting them together. It's not rocket science to do one yourself however - the one piece advice I give any clients of mine is to make sure there records are meticulous. It's never fun trying to put a ream of out-of-sequence pages into order.

If you have some time before the hearing, the first thing I would do would be to write to the solicitor pointing out each mistake with the bundle in a clear bullet pointed list, e.g. page 6 is missing from document X; the photograph at Y has been poorly copied, etc. And say that unless bundles correcting these areas are prepared by such and such a time, you will be preparing a supplementary bundle for the court and explaining to the judge why you needed to do this.

It's a way of doing things eurochick - I would say however that you're unlikely to get a response of any kind with that sort of tactic. Which will mean you will have less time to prepare the bundle you mention and in a worst case scenario filing it late with the court who refuses to accept it.

It's why I advocate people preparing their own bundle as a matter of course. So much can ride on a contested hearing and you really don't want to leave anything to chance.

But as others have said on here, judges hate two bundles if it can possibly be avoided. By writing to the solicitors, if they do end up with two bundles, you have at least tried to avoid it.

(BTW, I am a disputes lawyer but do not practise in the family courts.)