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Solicitors from hell – the sequel

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Readers may be familiar with the saga of the solicitors from hell website. A disgruntled client of a law firm started the site and it became pretty powerful with literally hundreds of vitriolic comments about a large number of solicitors and their law firms.

We’re certainly not saying that many complaints about solicitors are not merited, although as with every walk of life and every profession, there are good and bad. The issue which many had with this site was twofold :-

  • comments were not checked or modified, there was no objectivity and much of the content was slanderous.
  • the owner of the site starting demanding money from solicitors who complained to him and wanted their names removed from it. In fact, we also believe that the owner was charging money for advertising on the site also.

In any event, the owner clearly had a major beef with the whole legal profession, so much so that he also took on the Law Society. That case went to court quite recently, he lost, and was ordered to take the site down, and it also appears he may be insolvent. So, story over.

Apparently not. whilst browsing for legal content this week, we found a new website, www.solicitorsfromhell2.com (we would normally post a link, but in this case, out of principle, we are not going to directly boost that site in the search rankings). We haven’t yet checked on whether the owner of this new site is the same person, we would doubt it, and we have no idea what agenda the owner has, if any, but they certainly seem to be asking for trouble if they want to persist with this site, bearing in mind what happend to the original site.

What was interesting also about the original site is that many solicitors considered legal action (and some started it) to try and get the site taken down, but as it was hosted abroad, there were jurisdictional issues, which demonstrates just how complex these type of cases are and how the web remains very difficult to police.

If you have any interesting comments either on the original site, or it’s apparent successor, please do contribute.

 

 

Funding arrangements – risks for 3rd party funders

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Funding arrangements – interesting new case

For the average person or small business, having what appears on the face of it to be a strong legal case is one thing, being able to pursue it is another. Not only do many cases involve situations where a prospective claimant can’t afford his, her or it’s own legal costs, but there are other expenses, in legal terms called disbursements, which will need to be paid. These can typically include :-

  1. Court fees
  2. Expert fees
  3. Barrister’s fees
  4. After the event insurance costs protecting against a costs order in favour of the defendant

There are some types of claims where the above issues do not cause a problem, typically personal injury claims as solicitors not only agree to deal with the case on a no win no fee basis but they also subsidise the other costs and recover these at the conclusion of the case. Why do they do this ? Simply because the prospects of success, on a pure “numbers game” basis are good enough.

But what happens where, for one reason or another, either after the event insurance against the opponent’s costs is either not available or not taken out ? In other words, what happens if the claimant loses without cover against the defendant’s costs where it appears the claimant’s solicitor has otherwise financially supported the case ?

In the above type of situation, the defendant’s may apply for an order that the solicitors pay their costs on the basis of being a 3rd party funder of the claimant with a potential financial benefit from the litigation.

This is all particularly relevant given a recent High Court Order on this issue which went to appeal. In this case, the High Court has ordered the solicitors in question to provide disclosure of the funding of their clients unsuccessful case

This ruling has proved quite controversial.  In the lower court the Judge thought that such orders “could be to undermine or perhaps even to destroy the workings of the CFA system”, but the upper court disagreed.

Ultimately, the ruling was based on public policy and we think it is logical that if a case is being funded by a 3rd party behind the scenes, whether  as solicitor firm or otherwise, in circumstances where the case would not otherwise go ahead, they should accept the risk if it all goes wrong.