Contesting Solicitor Charges

BaZ87

BaZ87

BaZ87

Don
Joined
9 Jun 2004
Posts
48,290
Last summer we decided to sell our family restaurant. I received an estimate of £1500-2000 + VAT from a solicitor to handle the sale. It was a straight forward contract of sale for the business (goodwill & fixtures and fittings), with the buyer being provided with a completely new lease from the landlord.

Around September last year everything was pretty much done and dusted from our point of view - the contract for the sale was in place with the buyer and it was just a case of waiting for the buyer and the landlord to finalise the new lease and the sale would go through. The solicitor bills me monthly and by September we'd already paid him around the top end of his estimate.

With the landlord being a church things move slowly and there's been a few snags with the new lease. Over the last 6 months or so, every month I've received bills of £200-300 from our solicitor. I've always gave him the benefit of the doubt as I'm sure he's sent the odd letter, email or call chasing things up but the bills were mounting up way beyond his estimate.

With all the delays in finalising the new lease for the buyer we've reached an agreement where my existing lease will remain and I will provide the buyer with permission to trade from the premises until his lease is in place. I informed our solicitor of this mid February. A couple of weeks ago I received a call from the buyer asking if I could chase my solicitor up as his solicitor had sent a couple of emails to him on the 8th March which he hadn't answered. I tried calling a couple of times without being able to get through, on the 2nd time his secretary told me that he'd be working on my file in the coming days. A few days later I get a letter from the solicitor with a copy of a letter he sent to the buyers solicitor. Long story short, both mine and the buyers solicitors have completely ignored what they were instructed (the letter even acknowledged that they were doing this too) and were still trying to complete the sale based on the new lease. I phoned my solicitor & the buyer phoned his and we both had to make it clear to them to put the sale through regardless of the new lease.

Yesterday I receive another bill from our solicitor for just under £1,100 for March. As well as the usual charges for the odd email and phone call, there's a £240+vat charge for preparing documents on 1/3/2017, £96+vat again for preparing documents on the 14/3/2017, £168 and £144+vat for the same on the 21st and 22nd.

I have no idea what the charges on the 1st and 14th relate to. There was nothing for him to prepare until after he received any contact from the buyers solicitor on the 8th, which I know he didn't look at until after the 20th. And even the charges on the 21st & 22nd were for doing the exact opposite of what I instructed him.

With the new bill we're up to £5,500 including vat with the initial top end estimate being £2,400 and we're not yet finished. When all is signed and sealed I'd be surprised if it's not topped £7,000.

I want to complain to him and get some kind of explanation of why costs have gone so far above his initial estimate but I don't want it to hold up the sale and I'm more than a bit concerned that he'll bill me for that too. Is there anyway I can contest these charges once the sale has gone through?
 
You might want try speaking to him first and get him to justify each invoice especially the ones for March. If you're still not happy with it and feel he hasn't properly executed your instructions but won't reduce his charges call the law society they may be able to advise you on what you can do.
 
It's the SRA that regulates costs conduct.

http://www.sra.org.uk/faqs/contact-...-unhappy-complain-refund-legal-ombudsman.page

https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/handbook/code/part2/rule1/content.page

Indicative behaviours are helpful to your cause but just like any decent complaint, don't go in guns blazing quoting the Code of Conduct because that will annoy him if he can easily justify the time spent. There are a lot of blanks to fill in from your brief post (obviously you don't want to bore us with the detail). Buyer is brave to take a transfer of the business without a lease or agreement for one... I hope the landlord is consenting to the short term arrangement and you've got the dilaps position sorted.
 
Playing devil's advocate here but he has probably estimated based on a smooth process and by your own admission things have deviated from the plan somewhat which has taken more work. With that being said if they have done work contrary to what you have instructed and charged for it I would definitely take that up with them. Talk to them in the first instance and if you feel like they have breached their code of conduct take it up with SRA as above.
 
When we bought our flat we got an estimate from the solicitors and it ended up being about half the amount we were actually billed for. There were no hiccups, holdups etc. They were rubbish, rude at times and would never use them again. Part of the issue I guess was that we were naive. When you give all the information for a sale to the solicitors you expect them to give you an estimate based on that information. No, they gave us a base estimate that ignored all of that and then when the bill came through it had all the things like leasehold added.

Being a solicitor seems like a licence to print money. Stuff that clearly is a template and their system probably does most of the work will cost you a couple of hundred quid.
 
I would agree with above - ask for documented evidence of where all the charges come from.....what was sent on what date and how much was charged.

Be polite, ask for a breakdown of costs as you are concerned with the rising bill and the original estimate seems to have come and gone. Whilst it does sound like it's ended up more complicated that you or your solicitor imagined, you are well within your rights to request a fully itemised bill.

Good luck
 
solicitors charge by time.

They will charge for every letter they write, every phone call they take in relation to the matter and even email they have to read.

Unless you agree a fixed fee structure with them in advance this is how it is. You can argue, but its a solicitor are you likely to win or you will have to pay another solicitor to argue for you.

I used to work for them. lol
 
If you're near completion then probably get the sale done and then start asking questions about the charges, in particular the ones where there was no obvious tasks to be done and the charges for those letters sent which specifically went against your instructions (hopefully you've been e-mailing the solicitor with instructions so have some audit/records from your side rather than phone calls).

You'll need to follow their complaints procedure first - if they can't justify some of their charges (including where you've pointed out that they've clearly ignored your instructions and charged you extra as a result) then perhaps you can persuade them to refund you. If that fails then you can deal with the Legal Ombudsman service:

http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/helping-the-public/
 
Nitefly said:
I assume he's inferring that the work is taking the time to satisfy oneself how appropriate it is to use a template and/or how it needs amending.
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Ah that makes sense. Reminds me of this :

The Graybeard engineer retired and a few weeks later the Big Machine broke down, which was essential to the company’s revenue. The Manager couldn’t get the machine to work again so the company called in Graybeard as an independent consultant.

Graybeard agrees. He walks into the factory, takes a look at the Big Machine, grabs a sledge hammer, and whacks the machine once whereupon the machine starts right up. Graybeard leaves and the company is making money again.

The next day Manager receives a bill from Graybeard for $5,000. Manager is furious at the price and refuses to pay. Graybeard assures him that it’s a fair price. Manager retorts that if it’s a fair price Graybeard won’t mind itemizing the bill. Graybeard agrees that this is a fair request and complies.

The new, itemized bill reads….

Hammer: $5

Knowing where to hit the machine with hammer: $4995
Click to expand...
 
CraigN said:
You can argue, but its a solicitor are you likely to win or you will have to pay another solicitor to argue for you.
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It is someone doing low level conveyancing work who has ignored instructions and appears not to be on top of his work/communications to the point where he's had to fob off a couple of phone calls from the client(assuming the OP isn't some problem client who phones every other day demanding an update). This is hardly the sort of sharp legal professional you'd need to fear too much.
 
jamief said:
Absolute rubbish.
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Come on then, explain how much work it takes for them to knock up a letter that has no unique text beyond your property address or your names on it. Are you going to tell me that they type each one from scratch with unique text each time that satisfies all the legal requirements of the document.

Saying that the expertise required to write it in the first place is what justifies the cost is also BS. I am a programmer with years of experience but I wouldn't charge someone hundreds of pounds to do something that takes me 30 seconds just because someone less skilled would take longer.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

Just to clarify one thing quickly. The complications and delays that have held up the sale haven't actually involved myself or solicitor. The buyer and the landlord have had some issues between them regarding the new lease - my solicitor hasn't had to do anything. As I initially said, you could give him the benefit of the doubt for some of the additional charges as I'm sure he's sent the odd letter to the other parties to see if there's any update etc but in this period where he's not had to do anything other than the odd letter, I've been billed around £2,000 though and that's before the £1,100 bill for last month.

I think it's probably best to get the sale completed and then ask for an explanation. Does anybody know whether they can charge me for that though?
 
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