Client protection/rights

Dingle_berry

Apologies if this offends anyone, its really not meant to, its just a topic that was discussed recently.
The legal profession, especially "lawyers" are portraid as slimey ambulance chasers in entertainment media. A lot of "average joes" would perpetuate this stereotype - that solicitors etc main aim is to make money out of clients. That the client is a tool to use to get your pay cheque.
How true is this? What, if any, measures are in place to protect clients? For example things like separation, conveyancing, etc can be done without a solicitor but if you seek a solicitors opinion are they likely to advise you to engage their services?

johnnyskeleton

Dingle_berry wrote: »

Apologies if this offends anyone, its really not meant to, its just a topic that was discussed recently.
The legal profession, especially "lawyers" are portraid as slimey ambulance chasers in entertainment media. A lot of "average joes" would perpetuate this stereotype - that solicitors etc main aim is to make money out of clients. That the client is a tool to use to get your pay cheque.
How true is this?

Well, it's true that a lot of people take that view. Usually, they are people who have either never used a lawyer themselves or whose main gripe is that they were sued, lost and feel that the lawyer for the other side did something immoral.

What, if any, measures are in place to protect clients?

The same protections and more that apply to most other services. The first and foremost protection is yourself. There is also the law society complaints procedure.

For example things like separation, conveyancing, etc can be done without a solicitor but if you seek a solicitors opinion are they likely to advise you to engage their services?

I don't understand the question. Is it like saying that if you go to a garage and ask to buy a car, the dealer should advise you that public transport and cycling are cheaper ways to get around?

Dingle_berry

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I don't understand the question. Is it like saying that if you go to a garage and ask to buy a car, the dealer should advise you that public transport and cycling are cheaper ways to get around?

Lol yes. But is it purely media programming that makes people think like this? Or, as law can be such a complex and important.... thing.... is there some ethical "duty of care" type of thing to inform the client of all their options? Does a solicitor simply sell their service like a car salesman or is it more like medicine where the highly educated expert has a duty to inform the client of all their options?

December2012

Well in the case of family law court proceedings you must exhibit a certificate that you have advised your client of mediation.

A client decides if they are getting divorced or buying a house. A solicitor wouldn't be putting these ideas in the clients head.

Peregrinus

Dingle_berry wrote: »

. . . if you seek a solicitors opinion are they likely to advise you to engage their services?

If you seek a solicitor's opinion you've already engaged his services. Given advice is what solicitors do, and you've asked him for advice.

But, yes, a solicitor will advise you if he thinks the cost you will incur in professional fees for a particular transaction could outweigh the value to you of the transaction. Since the value to you of engaging in the transaction is something only you can determine, he'll never do more than suggest that this is something you should think about; weighing cost against value is in the end your judgment call, not his.

Will he advise you that it's a transaction you could do yourself, without professional help? There's two issues here; first, while there may be many simple (say) probate applications that you can do without professional assistance, until he actually does the application the solicitor won't know for sure whether yours is such a case. And, of course, once he does it, he wants to be paid for it. The other issue is, what value do you put on you own time? On not having to do the work? On not having to worry about whether you've done it properly? On not being uncertain whether you might have missed something that a professional would have picked up? Again, only you can say what this is worth to you.

johnnyskeleton

Dingle_berry wrote: »

Lol yes. But is it purely media programming that makes people think like this?

Who knows. Probably it is mostly due to the general Irish attitude towards professionals and educated people generally. Since lawyers are invariably well educated and professional, and many are well paid, there is little wonder that someone who is none of those things will feel resentment.

Or, as law can be such a complex and important.... thing.... is there some ethical "duty of care" type of thing to inform the client of all their options?

There is a duty to give correct advice, to inform of all reasonable risks and if there is an obvious alternative a solicitor can offer that. But if you are suggesting that a solicitor should inform a client that they could do their own litigation if they were to simply read up on law etc, then, no, they have no duty to do that. To continue my analogy, people don't go to the garage unless they are sure in their own minds that they need to buy a car, and people don't go to solicitors unless they are sure that they have a legal problem and they are sure that they can't handle it themselves.

Does a solicitor simply sell their service like a car salesman or is it more like medicine where the highly educated expert has a duty to inform the client of all their options?

Again, I'm struggling to grasp your meaning and I'm not sure what you think a solicitor should do. If I go to a doctor because I want to get a boil removed, he can tell me that the boil is not causing any ill health effects but if I'm clear about what I want done he doesn't have to and can move on to explaining the risks of the procedure ie infection. He does not have to tell me how to remove it myself, how to sterlyise my equipment or what to do if it goes wrong while I do it. Nor does he have to tell me that the doctor down the road will do it for half the price.

So a solicitor has to inform a client of the risks, costs etc of the conveyance, litigation etc. he doesn't have to inform the client that they could do the conveyance or litigation without a solicitor, because the client already knew this but decided that it was more efficient to pay a solicitor than it was to learn all the necessary information to do it themselves.

In the unlikely event that a client is unsure whether a solicitor is required or not, they can pay one solicitor to advise them of this, making sure they know in advance that if they do take on a solicitor it will be a different firm.

None of this is anything other than basic common sense, but I take your point that people in the Information Age seem almost compelled to delegate their thinking to someone else.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Has a solicitor ever told anyone that they would lose or be likely to lose a case

I know people who have been involved in cases that were no hopers from a legal perspective but the solicitors advised them to continue with the case even when an offer to settle was made.

valleyoftheunos

whenever people start talking about how they don't need a solicitor for verious things and how they can do it all themselves I think of my car stereo.

two years ago I bought a new stereo for my car. I decided that as a moderately intelligent human being with functioning hands I would install it myself because I could do it myself and I didn't need to be paying someone else to do it. I Spent 3 hours at it, I did get it in and it worked, pretty much most of the time, essentially I made a mess of it.

I took it to Halfords where I paid a man to reinstall it. It was his job to install car radios, he did between 5 and 10 a day he told me. it took him half an hour and it works perfectly all the time. It was money well spent, I should have gone to him first.

My point is that just because you can do something yourself doesn't mean you have to or that its a good idea. Yes you can apply for probate without a solicitor but you won't do it as well or as quickly as a solicitor who has done them before. Yes it costs money to instruct a solicitor to do things that you could perhaps do yourself, that doesn't mean hiring a Solicitor is a waste of money.

valleyoftheunos

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Has a solicitor ever told anyone that they would lose or be likely to lose a case

I know people who have been involved in cases that were no hopers from a legal perspective but the solicitors advised them to continue with the case even when an offer to settle was made.

I would think people are advised that they are likely to lose all the time. Its not the sort of advice people like hearing so they sometimes move on until the find a Solicitor who tells them what they want to hear.

johnnyskeleton

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Has a solicitor ever told anyone that they would lose or be likely to lose a case

Yes, all the time. A solicitor could easily have five people come into him/her about a case - one would want to sue a bank for lending too much to them, another would have such a minimal grievance that its not a stateable case (I was almost hit by a car and got an awful fright), one will have noone to sue (I want maintenance from my husband but he could be anywhere in the world) . Of the two that might have an alright case, the solicitor will tell them that even the strongest case has no guarantee of success, and of those two one will proceed, the other wont. So while I don't have any statistics to back it up, for various reasons it wouldn't surprise me if less than half of all potential litigants are told they could lose or are likely to lose. All are told of the risk and uncertainty of losing even if they have a strong case.

I know people who have been involved in cases that were no hopers from a legal perspective but the solicitors advised them to continue with the case even when an offer to settle was made.

Its easy to say that they are no hopers in retrospect. But the crucial thing is that the solicitors "advised" them. They didn't make them do anything they didn't want to do. Ther must also be countless examples of people being advised to settle and not doing it, or being advised not to settle but settle anyway. It doesn't really prove much.

Dingle_berry

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

In the unlikely event that a client is unsure whether a solicitor is required or not, they can pay one solicitor to advise them of this, making sure they know in advance that if they do take on a solicitor it will be a different firm.

This is the situation I was most curious about. A lay person, ignorant of the legal system just assuming that a solicitor is required. So such a person could go to a solicitor, make it clear that they will not be engaging their services whether required or not, and the solicitor will educate them about the process and their options? To the best of the solicitors abilities with the information provided and lack of crystal ball!

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

None of this is anything other than basic common sense, but I take your point that people in the Information Age seem almost compelled to delegate their thinking to someone else.

Yeah it seems ridiculous when you remember that a solicitor is essentially a service provider. It's something I'm lucky to have never thought about before. But the approach of asking a professional to have a look, get their opinion and shop around is one I use in situations like buying and maintaining a car.

johnnyskeleton

Dingle_berry wrote: »

This is the situation I was most curious about. A lay person, ignorant of the legal system just assuming that a solicitor is required. So such a person could go to a solicitor, make it clear that they will not be engaging their services whether required or not, and the solicitor will educate them about the process and their options? To the best of the solicitors abilities with the information provided and lack of crystal ball!

And of course if you pay them. If you pay a solicitors agreed fee you can ask them to advise you on whatever you want, or get them to explain any number of legal issues.

Yeah it seems ridiculous when you remember that a solicitor is essentially a service provider. It's something I'm lucky to have never thought about before. But the approach of asking a professional to have a look, get their opinion and shop around is one I use in situations like buying and maintaining a car.

There ya go. Why should a solicitor be any different?

Pat Mustard

Dingle_berry wrote: »

The legal profession, especially "lawyers" are portraid as slimey ambulance chasers in entertainment media. A lot of "average joes" would perpetuate this stereotype - that solicitors etc main aim is to make money out of clients. That the client is a tool to use to get your pay cheque.
How true is this?

It is true that this is the stereotype.

I read an article in a newspaper many years ago, to the unsurprising effect that people hate lawyers. I nearly fell out of my chair with the shock. However, what was interesting was that even though people hated lawyers, they tended to like and trust their own lawyers, largely.

There are bitter, disappointed litigants out there with axes to grind against other parties and the lawyers that represented them. Their opinion of a lawyer who acted against them is likely to be biased and unreliable. Ask somebody what their own lawyers are like and you may get a reply which is worth considering.

Peregrinus

It wouldn't be at all unusual for someone to come to me proposing a particular course of action (which would require legal representation) and my advice to them is not to pursue that course of action (thereby depriving myself of the possiblity of representing them). If appropriate, I'll suggest a different course, which may be one not requiring legal representation. I probably wouldn't charge for this advice (certainly wouldn't, if it's an established client).