Solicitors Review

Clients beware!

There has been a recent case in the press and legal journals of a firm of solicitors suing a former client who posted an extremely unpleasant review saying the solicitors were fraudulent and a sham. This was found to be defamatory by the Court and had an adverse effect on new clients approaching the firm. The former client had failed to engage in any complaints process. Reading between the lines the Judge clearly felt the former client was extremely spiteful and awarded damages to the solicitors of £25,000 plus costs.

Thankfully we have noticed only one incident of a client using the review process to try and damage our practice. They were first time buyers and suggested we were incompetent because we did not chase their lenders, who had yet to issue the mortgage offer. That clearly was not within our brief and nor was it an issue we could have resolved in any event until such time as the mortgage offer had been issued. We took the view that any prospective client would look at our many positive reviews and consider the review from this unfortunate former client in context.

By way of general commentary, a new source of litigation has been created by social media with parties suing for defamation by reason of Facebook and other social media statements. As we have previously posted, divorce are on the increase in part due to the fact that during lockdown married couples post messages or send text to third parties which highlight their own matrimonial misconduct.

Beware!