Most complaints against family lawyers

One in five complaints resolved by the legal ombudsman last year involved divorce or family law.

Excessive charging was at the root of many of these—some divorce cases exceeded estimates by more than £30,000, while one client was charged £4,000 for photocopying—according to report by the legal ombudsman published this week. However, the average cost of divorce has been estimated at about £1,300.

A quarter of the divorce-related complaints were due to poor costs information—one in five clients said they were not given an estimate of fees when they first consulted their lawyer.

The report also found that some clients ran up unnecessary costs by relying on their lawyer for emotional support. In nearly one in five cases investigated, the lawyer failed to provide adequate advice.

Chief legal ombudsman, Adam Sampson says: “This report shows that there are legitimate reasons for there to be more complaints about divorce than other areas of law.

“However, clearly lawyers could be doing more to reduce complaints by providing accurate costs information, providing decent service levels and by taking complaints seriously.”

The legal ombudsman has re-published a guide to good costs practice for lawyers.

Liz Edwards, chair of Resolution, says: “We support the report, which has good information in it and some top tips.

“Family law is more emotive than other areas of law. Divorce is a distress-purchase, and sometimes people are unhappy with the results. All our members agree to resolve things in a non-confrontational way. The client might ask the solicitor to behave in a particular way, for example, a confrontational or aggressive way, which would be against the code of practice.”

Geraldine Morris, head of LexisPSL Family, says: “It can be very difficult to predict the final amount of costs in a family case—many unforeseeable factors can contribute including an emotional client who needs a lot of hand-holding, or a difficult spouse who refuses to co-operate or provide proper disclosure.

“Family cases where costs tend to escalate include those where interim applications are required, for example, for interim maintenance, to address incomplete disclosure or to secure assets that may otherwise be dissipated prior to a final hearing—it may be impossible to predict at the outset of a family case that such steps will be required. That said, a £4,000 bill for photocopying is exceptional and very unlikely to be a common occurrence. As stated in the Ombudsman’s report, taking out anger with a spouse using the court process or using a lawyer for emotional support will increase costs and should be avoided. The majority of family lawyers will advise against doing so, but clients may give instructions that are contrary to the advice they have received.

“Emotions run high in many family cases, the level of complaints may be reflective of the reality that even where an outcome is entirely reasonable neither party may be happy with the resultant drop in their standard of living which will be inevitable where the same income and resources have to be split across two households instead of one.

“All lawyers are required to provide a cost estimate at the outset and to regularly review that costs estimate and inform the client if and why the costs estimate may need to be adjusted (usually because of a change of events, an interim application or emergency steps etc). While one in five complainants to the Ombudsman in relate to family cases state that they were not given a costs estimate, that does not mean that those complaints were correct in every case. That said, family lawyers are increasingly looking at ways to manage and reduce costs for family clients, including fixed fees for procedural steps instead of hourly rates and directing clients to methods of resolving disputes outside of the overburdened court process such as mediation, collaborative law and arbitration.”