Novoiceleft wrote:In my matter, a simple form had to be filled in for the transfer of a property. A single page form that contained an address, a sum of money, two signatures and two tick boxes. It was prepared by the conveyancer, approved by the lenders solicitor, then sent to two matrimonial lawyers, who each felt they had to refer it to their firm's property lawyers. One of whom made a small, trivial correction. So it had to go right round the loop again to all 6 lawyers. A single page form took about 40-50 emails in total and a bill of £2,000.
If that’s what actually happened it’s disgraceful, and you should have refused to pay the bill.
But it vividly illustrates one of the curses of modern lawyering that’s been brought about by our regulators (and, it has to be said, enthusiastically welcomed by many lawyers) namely the ludicrous degree of specialisation.
When I trained most solicitors were general practitioners, able to turn their hands to most things. Of course there were specialist firms then but they were in genuinely specialised fields. So work that needed that level of expertise would be referred to such a firm. Alternatively, a barrister might be brought in to advise.
In the example given there would probably have been one solicitor who prepared the document and one for the other party involved. Lenders rarely used to employ their own solicitor, relying on the borrower’s solicitor to protect their interests.
But the Law Society in their ‘wisdom’ decided to promote the idea that law was desperately complex and that it was only possible to practise in one area. Part of the thinking was to build up the mystique and so justify higher charges. Sadly, this hogwash was swallowed hook, line and sinker, and the days of the GP solicitor were numbered.
The sheer stupidity of this argument can be seen when one compares solicitors with doctors. Despite doctors dealing with genuinely life or death situations the GP is still the norm. If you go to see your doctor with a sore shoulder he won’t turn you away on the basis he only deals with digestive problems. They will, of course, refer you to a consultant if necessary, just as we used barristers, but in most cases they can deal with it themselves.
The worst consequence of this is that PI insurers have also fallen for the Law Society propaganda so they now view GP solicitors as the spawn of the devil and either refuse to insure them or charge such massive premiums as to make the practice unviable.
And the net effect has been that many small, local, general practices have been forced out of business or been taken over by large practices that want to centralise everything, leaving many towns without any legal practitioners at all.