Solicitors hourly rates - what's yours?

Davesnave

I like this thread.

My solicitor charges nothing like the amounts quoted. She answers emails promptly and I get a phone number which goes straight to her, rather than some minion who screens out the 'less important' clients.

Perhaps you should try a different town and keep shopping around?

Catherine_Johnson_2

Yes, there is an hourly charge which they will state on their quote letters, but for anything like conveyancing (which is what we are talking about here I presume, as we're in the House Buying forum) you will probably be quoted a set fee - assuming the sale/purchase doesn't get overly complicated.

And, has been said, the hourly rate they quote isn't the solicitor's wage.

Of course, you could always do the conveyancing yourself if you think the cost unreasonable.

malcolmffc

SUpply and demand baby. AN hour of the solicitor's time adds far more value to the client than a spotty teenager in McDonalds serving a Big Mac. Hence the solicitor gets paid many times more

SailorSam

I've just had a small job done by a Solicitor and do feel it was expensive for what was just filling in a form but if we're starting to compare it with others i think Estate Agents take some beating with fees that can't be justified.

BristolBob

kuepper wrote: »

I've been shopping around and in my small town quoted between £200 and £275 plus vat. How can they justify such rates when min wage is not even a tenner? Some sort of price-fixing must be in operation to keep figures in this orbit, isn't this a national scandal?

What quality of legal advice would you get from the average minimum wage worker?

saverbuyer

It's hardly a free market when the Law Society can restrict supply.

sunshinetours

There are also many local solicitors who do not earn anywhere near as much as you would think, especially some one man bands who have traditionally relied on conveyancing work who are earning in reality way below minimum wage

Charge out rates traditionally (not as much now) used to be based loosely on 1/3rd profit, 1/3rd overheads and 1/3rd wages

OGR

I work for a Solcitors but am not a solicitor.

Our firm has hourly rates between £160 and £265 depending on the person and position in the firm. Remember though that a lot of things such as a Will or Conveyancing will usually be fixed fee.

The partners say that a fee earner in our firm has to make £120,000 in a year profit to break even. Factors include

Fee Earner Salary
Secretary/PA salary
% of Support staff salary's (Reception, general office etc)
% of PII insurance (6 figure sum each year)
% of Premises costs
% of Practising certificate and SRA membership costs (large 5 figure sum each year)
% of IT systems support (large 5 figure sum each year)
% of General overheads included in hourly rate such as copying and archiving
% of General office overheads such as lighting, heating, water.

Running a solicitors is a very expensive business especially when you HAVE TO pay for SRA membership and HAVE TO have PII. Copiers are expensive, servers and storage is expensive, accounts system yearly maintenance costs are expensive, archiving is expensive. I would guess that in most cases 3/4 of all income ends up as outgoings and that the remaining 1/4 is what the equity partners share at the end of a year.

Also remember that a fee earner will not be time recording all day. I think most firms want you to do 5 hours a day as a minimum but there will be many cases where this just doesn't happen. Work is short for a lot of solicitors at the moment but they still have to meet their overheads, some of which are mandatory.

Richard_Webster

Supply is not restricted. There are three to four times as many solicitors in England/Wales than when I qualified some years ago, plus lots of Licensed Conveyancers.

Of course you could allow anyone to do conveyancing - then see the complaints that would follow of unqualified and unsupervised people allowing people to buy properties with no proper advice! The NHS would save millions in salaries if the unemployed could take turns in doing surgery!

Ordinary conveyancing transactions are rarely charged at hourly rates. Solicitors charge what the market will bear and that's usually a lot less than £200 per hour!

Hourly rates get quoted in "Terms of Business" as back protection for those cases where there genuinely is extra work outside the remit of the original estimate/quote.

FTBFun

saverbuyer wrote: »

It's hardly a free market when the Law Society can restrict supply.

Thankfully it is - unfortunately i'm a tax adviser (chartered) and in common with accountants, our sector isn't protected as much.

Basically, anyone can call themselves and accountant or tax adviser without a sniff of a professional qualification, hence why some people do get screwed over by their "professional" advisers. If anyone can remember the stamp duty land tax avoidance schemes from a few years ago, and the laughable attempts of unqualified "advisers" on here to defend these, you'll see what I mean.