Hi. Do lawyers have to have an expertise/speciality? I mean…

This is tricky as it is a question of degree. A solicitor should not accept a case where he knows nothing about that area of law. However if a case is a litigation matter then the solicitor often is dealing with the litigation side whilst relying on others to provide the expertise for the subject matter of the litigation. Examples of this are personal injury cases where the lawyer will deal with the procedure but rely on doctors to provide the medical evidence that the lawyer needs to rely on to win the case. There are numerous other examples. But the lawyer must make sure that they understand what they are being told by the expert otherwise they cannot and will not use the expert's input effectively,.Here it seems that the lawyer did not understand the complexities and you do have an argument that he should have just said so rather than trying to bumble on

Yours sincerely

Which way you go depends on how much you lost.

Solicitors have to have insurance provided you can show they were negligent and secondly that that negligence led to financial loss you claim make a claim for negligence against the solicitor which will be dealt with as an insurance claim. Within that claim you can seek to recover the fees you paid as well as for the loss suffered.

If the loss you suffered can be recompensed by the return of some or all of the fees you paid then you can pursue that avenue.

Personally I would claim against their insurance and to do that you write to them stating that they have been negligent and say why. You ask them to pass the letter to their insurers and confirm to you that they have done so

Yours sincerely

The amount that you are entitled to may not be equivalent to a full refund. Rather than calculating it from what you have paid you need to calculate it from what you have lost putting the fees to one side for a moment.

What they are saying about not reporting it to the insurers is a nonsense, a claim must be reported to the insurers on most policies within a certain amount of time usually 7 or 14 days.otherwise the insurers can avoid the claim. It could be theirs states that a report must be made within a certain time of a law society complaint but that seems unlikely

Try to calculate your loss from the mistake and let me know what it is

Yours sincerely

So your potential loss was a definite £6000 and possible £11000. plus you were charged £17000 for unproductive legal work.Which way you go depends on whether you can still pursue the amounts. If you cannot because the claim was unsuccessfully litigated then you claim on the insurance and should pursue this. If you still can claim the amounts then you concentrate on getting some of the fees spent back and can do this by complaining to the law society about the charges

Yours sincerely

A full refund is unlikely but there is no reason why you should not get a substantial portion , say, 80% and yes pursue this through the law society

Yours sincerely

No because there are too many variables. How quickly would you have done it anyway, would you be guaranteed to succeed etc

Yours sincerely

It depends on the consequences of their failure to advise you regarding the various financial bands. If a case can be easily transferred and the consequential costs are minimal then you may not have a case. You certainly can limit your claim to keep it in the small claims court but that in fact would be a disadvantage if you have lawyers acting for you as only minimal costs are awarded there so i you would want the claim to go to fast track. The primary cause of complaint should be the quality of the advice and, I suspect , you can also claim duplication of charges since the solicitors placed heavy reliance on the expert but were also charging you for their time.

Yours sincerely

It can be because the solicitor cannot be expected to know the answer so he took the logical step of asking someone who should. I am not sure why he needed to go to a third party but if he has a logical reason that would defeat your claim.

It is possible that we can argue that he should have refused the case and directed you to a tax specialist but the only drawback is that such a specialist is likely to be very expensive and you could have ended up paying the same amount anyway.

My overall feeling though is that £17000 sounds a lot to find out that you have no claim.

Yours sincerely

No I do not know the answer with any certainty however the first lawyer should have ensured he understood the issue well enough to ask the second one the correct question

Yours sincerely

It depends on whether he understood that was not the point, explained it to you and had a tactical reason that you agreed with for making it anyway, such as it might force an economic settlement. If he made the point in error not understanding the case then it is a mistake and you are entitled to some money back.

Yours sincerely

Be realistic in your expectations you are unlikely to get a full refund although that should be your starting point. A solicitor would have to do some work to ascertain how difficult or easy the point you are raising is before rejecting the case so he will be given something to represent the work that they believe he did legitimately.Your main complaints are that he did not bail out at that point and duplication of work

Yours sincerely

Michael

I used to do something similar which I called a research fee . As a general litigator there are often areas of law that you are not entirely familiar with and apart from very specialist firms only a general litigator can help the client with. But a general litigator cannot be expected to know everything litigation is a vast field. So I would say to the client that I did not know but I can find out. I would cost out a barrister's advice and the cost of the preparation work such as taking a statement and putting together the papers and quote a fee to the client. I would say that obviously that money is at risk but at least they will know whether it is worth pursuing and the fee would be fixed on whatever we agreed.

Now something not dissimilar has occurred here so it is not possible to say that the solicitor dealt with it illogically. However 2 things occurred. The first is that you were charged rather alot and secondly the solicitor asked an incorrect question of the 2nd expert. Only someone who has been through all the papers can tell what effect that had on your case and whether what was charged was reasonable. He clearly strayed off the track but the early work is chargeable

Yours sincerely

If you can still claim it then you have no claim agaionst the solicitor but if , say, it is now time barred then you have a claim against the solicitor for the loss of the opportunity to make the claim

Yours sincerely

If they are offering a full refund of the fees I would be inclined to accept.

The reasons are as follows. No offer will be perfect, as you point out there is no element of compensation.

Our case is that they deliberately failed to advise you of the availability of the small claims court for such a claim causing unnecessary stress and expense and then failed to run the case well.We need to bear in mind that the damages for stress are low in the UK as we do not have punitive damages as they do in the States. Also evidence of stress will need to be shown if it is to be anything other than a token amount. So you would have had to have visited your doctor for the stress. However we also lost the possibility of recovering damages from the case and we believe it was a good case

Their case will be that they were of course aware of the small claims court but because the case related to tax they felt it was unsuitable as one of the grounds for moving a case that falls within the small claims court to the normal County Court is complexity. This was a tax case and hence unsuitable for the small claims court. It was a difficult case , they did their best and are entitled to be paid something for their efforts. All that we lost was the possibility of a successful claim and there is no guarantee that the claim would have been successful

You could push for an amount in respect of the potential claim but I would limit it to a couple of thousand pounds otherwise I would give the offer serious consideration

Yours sincerely

Yes it does and it makes them look unreliable so hopefully the judge then questions everything they say. The only catch is that what they lied about must be important to the case otherwise it will simply annoy the judge if it is not relevant anyway

Yours sincerely

Both the contents of the document and the fact they lied about it are important . I would ask for affidavits but if they do not supply them move on and do not get stuck on the point

Yours sincerely

I do not think that the court will accept that they committed fraud as it is too strong for the circumstances.Civil courts tend to shy away from impugning criminal motives in these types of situation

However you can certainly argue that they were negligent. As well as the contract they have with you as a customer they have a duty of care to you. By making a mistake they breached that duty of care and were negligent. They then made what amounts to an admission of liability to you only to try to retract it later

Yours sincerely

Yes but do not push it, say it is tantamount to fraud and leave it there otherwise the judge may think you are being over dramatic

Yours sincerely

This is a different cause of action if you wanted to argue this in court you would have to change your claim on the court papers to include it. Also you would need to know why they showed different accounts

Yours sincerely

Yes go ahead

Yours sincerely

Michael

It sounds very much the same as a directions hearing.

The court will do 2 things, the first is look at what needs to be done to get the case ready for a hearing. These considerations will include whether you need to file any documents , if so, the court will provide a time frame work for that to be done. As such that bit is administrative

The second part is that the court will look at the merits of the case and possibly give an indication of which way it will go if it goes to a hearing. The idea is to save everyone time.

You need to do 3 things to prepare.

First get your argument down to a summary. Basically what were they supposed to do, what did they do and that that was a breach of contract.

Second look at their defence and make notes of any obvious defects. You may not get the chance to comment on their case but if you do you are ready

Collate the documents you think you will need to produce at the final hearing so you are ready to advise the court on how many documents you have, if necessary, and you make exchanging and filing them when the time comes easy

Yours sincerely

Michael

The missing document can be used to imply that it contains something devastating , you asked for it several timwes, it existed, now it does not and let the judge draw his own conclusion.

Otherwise yes, also keep it simple and do not use legalese

The court may give a view on how it will go or simply tell you both what needs to be done before the hearing

Yours sincerely

Michael

Sorry, legalise is when lawyers say things like "hereinbefore" and " thereinafter"

It would be a good idea to summarise your case and your points on the defence of the defendants. It is easy to miss points in court, they are alien environments for most people and when you think of something to say it may not be your turn to talk.

This way you can write your case out slowly, check it and send it knowing the judge will have that in front of them

Yours sincerely

Michael

If it takes 4 pages to explain the situation then it is not too long but try to be as brief as possible , judges have a limited attention span because they are busy.

The statement you make is not legalising things but it is for the judge to decide whether they acted reasonably or not,

I would not put any questions in or ask them to prove you wrong again that is the judge's job

Yours sincerely

That is extremely good evidence and should sway the judge in your favour. Also in the circumstances given various options had been discussed I would have expected them to do nothing without firm written instructions

Yours sincerely

The judge will simply have to decide who is telling the truth there but the other evidence strongly suggests you are

Yours sincerely

They would have had to have been negligent for you to have a claim so we would need to know whether presenting the start up account as a loan is common accepted practice or not

Yours sincerely

Not enough, since what they did was not negligent. I would not pursue this in court , the judge might find it confusing. Your basic case is strong so stick with it and keep it simple ,clouding the issue can only help them.

Yours sincerely

It is not included in your claim and so there are 2 problems with it

The first is even if the judge accepts your reasoning on that issue he can do nothing about it

The second is showing that they made an error on the loan account does not mean that they made an error in closing the company as they are 2 different issues

Yours sincerely

Yes , that is correct

Yours sincerely

It is up to you . It is your case and if you feel that if you do not bring it up that you will be missing something then do so. However I would deal with it quickly because my feeling is that it is not really relevant

Yours sincerely

A person/company who has the benefit of the indemnification , here that would be the person who has the benefit of the promise that the other party will pay their costs

Yours sincerely

I am happy to help but I will be away for the next 3 days and not on the system.

Yours sincerely

Michael

Yes completely

Thats an excellent idea

Hiya

Yes you would go to the local county court and get the forms from them and then you can obtain the witness summons

This is again a new question - but it certainly looks like a potential breach of contract and/or negligence

I do not of course have the full case - but I can certainly see your argument

Hiya,

This will not come up I am afraid - there is no such record of this information - I would not overly worry about not having this information

happy to discuss

Hiya

Please press ACCEPT as stated

There is nothing wrong in calling the other directors if they have something to add which you think will help your case

Hiya

It is pretty much the answer above - if they will make your case stronger then you should call them

That is difficult to say - it will depend on the judge and whether he has had time to read the file and also the fact that everything is in the correct file -

That is correct - it would be worth you giving the court a call and checking that they have everything together - you may also wish to check which Judge has been allocated the case

you will be allowed to explain your case but the judge will ask questions as well

please press accept

basically yes

Happy to discuss

You are not generally entitled to compensation I am afraid

happy to discuss

You can ask but there is no guarantee on this

Please press ACCEPT for extra help