Solicitors charges for emails

fifixx

I am finishing off my mum's probate which has taken my slowcoach solicitors almost a year to sort out (land involved!). After probate was granted, I took charge and have liquidated all the shares etc in little under a week with the funds being put in the solicitors client account.

I just had a letter explaining the bill will be an extra £4000 - of which at least half is email and phone charges. Each email received or sent is charged at 6 mins - £17,50 (PLUS VAT!!!) - and I even had one from her just saying Thanks for some info I sent....

My argument is that emails are sent back and forth like a conversation sometimes, so how can they charge so much each time they read it?

Do I have a case for a write-off or reduction does anyone think? They have already had £6000. (PLUS VAT!!!)

I have a complete breakdown of the bill which will take me a couple of hours to check - can I charge them back? (I wish)

Equaliser123

The obvious thing is what did your letter of engagement say?

RobertoMoir

Some of the emails I send at work take seconds to type...
And decades of knowledge and experience to know what to say.

My employer pays for the latter rather than the former. I suspect you are too with your solicitor. I do agree with both the points already raised, especially JDTurk's one - there's a big difference between "Thanks for that" type emails and something that actually progresses your case. One point: If they're charging 6 mins per email and some of them took 6 seconds to write (e.g. "thanks for the info) and some of them took 6 hours to research and write, it may be you are better off with this "6 mins average" idea.

Laz123

To be blatantly honest they are taking the michael of of you.

£10,000, and taking a year so far is totally out of order.

I was charged £3,000 for my stepfathers probate and it took 3 months and I thought that was excessive. I would seek advice from the solicitors' governing body.

Fantasy00

Under Contract law, all charges inc email/phone communication SHOULD be written on contract, if not, then, you don't have to pay them. FACT.

cyberbob

Your payind for their time to read the emails and their professional take on ot. The same way you would pay for time if you had a meeting. So i'm not sure you would have much of a claim

Did you have a list of their charges when you employed them if the charges weren't set down to you initially that could be the only point i could see you having an argument. It may be worth speaking to someone like the CAB

fifixx

it was quite a complicated probate with investigations into land etc so I knew that the bill would be high and they did quote around £8000. However it is these niggles that really bug as often it was an exchange of information which could have been within one 5 minute phone call - but of course email is now more commonly used and I for one like to note things down.

They have also noted that my mum had £400 o/s on her will bill from 2008 - but I know the solicitor then wrote to her writing it off. In yesterdays letter they said they would write it off to show that they are decent people - so now I have to dig out the original letter - so my time wasted.

I am very happy with the solicitor and their work which is very good and thorough, if very slow, I just want to negotiate the email bill down a bit!!

Weirdlittleman

So basically you are entirely happy with the service; already having an outstanding bill written off yet want more reduced for no apparent reasons.

Solicitors cost money, why should it be free because its done by e-mail. Yes query any unncessary e-mails you have been charged for but otherwise pay up.

RobertoMoir

fifixx wrote: »

I am very happy with the solicitor and their work which is very good and thorough, if very slow, I just want to negotiate the email bill down a bit!!

Well negotiation is always possible isn't it? I'd agree that you shouldn't be paying (or at least it should be no more than an absolute token amount) for what is effectively a receipt to say your mail has been received but other than that, I have to ask...

You seem to object to being charged so much for emails because they're emails at least as much as you do because of the contents of the emails. When it might take a few hours to research and write a reply to something, what is the magical difference hitting the print button to put it on paper and hitting the send button to send it by email?

As I said earlier, it might take me a few moments to type something at work but my employer is paying for the few decades that went into knowing what to type. You're doing the same with your solicitor. When they charge you for writing a letter, you're not paying for their super hot word processing skills - you don't pay more for a solicitor that can type faster do you? - you're paying for their knowledge and professional expertise and this is unchanged by the medium used to communicate it.

fifixx

Example below - 2 emails - me to solicitor (£17.50 plus vat to read) and reply from solicitor to me 1 minute later (£17,50 plus VAT to send).

I have no quibble with charges so far except these little things - which amount to a couple of hundred pounds. Basically the minimum charge is 6 mins or less - I understand that billing has to be like this but as I have spent a considerable amount (and they have been slow which has made me contact them more than necessary), I feel that I can legitimately query these charges.

: from: xxx
Subject: RE: xxxx Estate
Date: 27 October 2009 15:10:55 GMT
To: xxx
Thank you, hopefully we will then have everything to finalise the
IHT papers.

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Original Message

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From: xxx
Sent: 27 October 2009 15:10
To: xxx
Subject: Re: xxxxx Estate

I will come around 10.0 on Friday so I can quickly go through them.
probably best to bring too much rather than too little!

fifixx

Anyway - thanks to everyone for the replies and I think the general consensus is that I pay for emails with information in and query the ones that are just confirming/thanking for previous communication.