Legal qualifications - how to check if someone has them?

[MrsExpo]

As title really. IS it possible to check if a person has the legal qualifications they claim to have? Is there a central register of solicitors somewhere?

There is a very long and complicated back story to this question, but trying to keep it short .... Thank you for any advice.

PS ... have looked at The Law Society web site and can’t find anything.

Every qualified, practising solicitor should be registered with the SRA. You can carry out a search on The Law Society's website:

solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk/

Choose the tab "Pro search" and then choose the option "Person".

Just to point out that not every qualified lawyer is a solicitor.

Oops...

Meaning that the person you dealt with may be qualified, but not as a solicitor.

Indeed. In fact any tom dick or harry can call themselves lawyer as it is not a protected word whereas solicitor, doctor, nurse are. So just be very careful. Some people may be barristers and presumably are on a similar website of the bar council.
Some may have failed an LLB. Some may have done a few contracts at work with no qualifications at all and set themselves up as a "lawyer". Some may be some kind of para legal qualified or otherwise. Some can be very experienced legal executives members of ILEX who I presume have a register of some kind.

Also check insurance. Solicitors have to have at least £2m of insurance cover nad contribute to a fund so that if a client loses out and the solicitor has disapepared or gone bust claims on the compensation fund may be made.

You may also be working with a solicitors firms and they are using different kinds of staff for different work. There may be some fairly easy to do work which it is perfectly right is filled in by the secretary or whatever it might be.

Others may not have a penny of insurance may not be allowed to do court work either which is a reserved activity. That is not to say that some unqualified contracts managers who have spent 20 years in a companyd oing contracts and then set up on their own are not good - some unqualified can be good but it is riskier.

Also be aware that the Law Society link is for practising solicitors only . I am a qualified solicitor but as I am currently non-practising I am not revealed in the search.

Why do you want to check?

That's true. I have been scannig my 1980s and 90s diaries and out of curiosity looking old legal colleagues up as I go and some who are out of practice but are qualified are not on the register.

Plus as well you'll have lots of people with law A-levels or even law degrees who are now working in completely different fields. Or those gems of people who have studied "at the Unversity of Life".