Why Use a Regulated Law Firm?

As solicitors, we maintain high and mandatory levels of professional indemnity insurance cover. In accordance with the SRA Code of Conduct , and what we believe to be the best interests of our clients, we maintain such insurance to a total level of £3 million . This insurance includes special protections , such as if the firm goes out of business, which are deliberately designed to offer reassurance to solicitors’ clients.

We are happy to provide details of our insurer on request, and we provide further detail in our standard Terms of Business. We are also willing to take out additional cover where required in relation to specific transactions or projects.

Legal consultancies usually provide a much lower level of professional indemnity insurance cover and cap their liability to clients at that level. In addition, their insurance does not have to include the special protections available to clients who use regulated law firms.

It is therefore important for you to carry out due diligence to understand your risk when using that type of advisor.

Since founding our business in 2008, we haven’t had any legal claims made against us. However, although we’re not the type of lawyers to harp on about the large fines that are possible under the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ), or the potential for compensation payments, it can happen. Making a sensible procurement choice when you appoint your lawyers includes understanding your insurance position should anything go wrong.

Advice that we provide as solicitors is often covered by “legal privilege” . In simple terms, this means that correspondence between a client and a solicitor can, if it is confidential and for the purposes of legal advice, be withheld from a court or third party in connection with legal proceedings.

Advice that you receive from non-regulated advisors, or legal consultants, is not covered by legal privilege . Therefore, their advice may be disclosable in evidence in the context of a legal claim.

At Pritchetts Law, we do not advise on contentious matters, but there have been many occasions when we have deemed it important to our clients that the advice we give is “for their eyes only”. We believe that it is often in the best interests of our clients to be able to decide how the advice given will be used.

If you are unhappy with the service that you receive from us as solicitors, you are entitled to raise an independent complaint with the Legal Ombudsman. In short, the Legal Ombudsman can order us to refund or reduce our fees, pay you compensation, carry out extra work needed to put things right, apologise and give back documents.

If you are unhappy with the services of legal consultants, that independent complaints process is not open to you because legal consultancy is not a regulated business. Your only option would be to raise your complaint with the legal consultant directly.

At Pritchetts, we would always ask our clients to speak to us first if they have any concerns so that we can resolve them together, but happily, we have had zero complaints since founding our business over a decade ago.

The fact that we’ve never received any complaints might lead you to think that having recourse to an independent complaints process isn’t such a big deal. However, one of the reasons that we’ve had no complaints is that we’ve always had to work to such highly regulated standards.

In addition, many clients like having the peace of mind that, in the event of a complaint, there is an independent third party to consider it and help to resolve it. This avoids the cost and hassle of having to take an unregulated business to arbitration – or to court – if you are dissatisfied with the quality of the advice you have received or the amounts that you may have unexpectedly been invoiced.

As solicitors, we must follow the SRA Code of Conduct , which is a set of rules that relate to the conduct of our business and of ourselves as solicitors. It covers things like maintaining trust and acting fairly, maintaining our own competence to advise you, avoiding conflicts of interest, and maintaining confidentiality. If we didn’t follow that code, we would end up in big trouble, with the likely result that we would no longer be able to work as solicitors.

Legal consultancies are not subject to the SRA Code of Conduct . Of course, it is in the best interests of “legal consultants” to act honestly so that they retain your trust and business. However, they are not subject to rules that require them to do so, nor to external checks and balances to ensure that this is maintained.

At Pritchetts Law, our clients can rely on our regulated status when deciding how to safely procure services and ensure the validity and reliability of the people who are advising them.