The link you posted Clubman was in relation to the issue involving claims made by people to the Residential Redress Board, where recently media stories are alleging that solicitors hired on behalf of the claimants over charged or double charged those clients legal fees.
In case anyone out there is not aware of what the Residential Redress Board deals with, in general it was set up to make awards ''to persons who, as children, were abused while resident in industrial schools, reformatories and other institutions subject to state regulation or inspection''.
What the recent media stories relate to are allegations by or on behalf of some of those claimants that their solicitors, who were hired by them to make the claim on their behalf, withheld ( wrongfully) sums of money from the awards they were made in relation to legal fees. This was in the context of those same solicitors being awarded legal fees by the Residential Redress Board also in relation to the same claims.
I would make a number of points:
The first is that it is entirely legal for a solicitor to charge any legal fee to a client where the client has agreed at the outset of a claim for such charge. In other words if you go into a solicitor and ask them to process a claim on your behalf, and they say to you, well I will deal with this claim for you, but I will charge €x to do so or I will charge a legal fee on the following basis ( and the basis is explained ) on top of any legal fee I am awarded by the insurance company or the Redress Board in this case- well then that solicitor is entitled to charge that fee. This is the case in any service or goods supplied. This person is free to go to any other solicitor they wish.
The second is that this has been done for many years now in the context of personal injury actions. It has long been the practice of insurance companies that they will pay only party/party costs and not solicitor/client costs in relation to any action. Which very basically means that they will not pay fees in relation to any advices/ attendances/ letters between solicitor and client nor any expenses which are deemed to be solicitor client, but will pay for any between the insurance company and the solicitor. Traditionally solicitors used to deduct a solicitor client fee from the award the client received and get their party party costs from the insurance company. In the past few years, competition has meant that many solicitors no longer charge a solicitor client legal fee, instead accepting the party party fee only. However there might still be some outlay which would have been paid out by the solicitor on behalf of their client which the insurance company would not pay for, and which the solicitor would then expect the client to pay. An example of this would be where a client felt they might have an injury which would warrant a medical report from a certain specialist, but that specialist might say on examination that either this was not related to the accident or that they did not in fact suffer from such and such condition. Now they might well have other injuries and would get an award, but the insurance company would not pay for a report from a specialist which obviously had no relation to the accident, in which case the client rightfully should bear the cost of that report. Even in recent times, however, some solicitors will still charge a solicitor client fee, and if this was clearly explained to the client at the outset and they agree to it, then it is entirely legal for the solicitor to go ahead and charge it on the determination of the case.
Indeed with PIAB, no solicitors fees are paid at present, so those people whos cases are decided through PIAB and who have a solicitor representing them will always have to pay their own solicitors fees. Again where this is made clear to them at the outset, there is no difficulty.
In relation then to the Residential Redress Board claims, in theory and in law where the claimant was advised at the outset that a solicitor client fee would be charged and either was told the exact fee or the basis on which the fee would be charged, and they understood this, then the solicitor was entitled to charge it.
The other two points I would make here are that up to last week, only ONE complaint was received by the Law Society in relation to this matter, and secondly, far from there being a large number of solicitors implicated here, as I understand it, only a very small number are involved. Possibly because one or more firms handled a volume of such claims.
The only proviso that I personally would make in relation to the above, and this is JUST a personal opinion, is that my experience of the type of people who are making claims to the RRB ( limited as aforesaid) is that they could be very vulnerable people, who are to some extent still institutionalised, and might not be quite in the position of the ordinary client. That therefore a greater degree of care should have been taken with these particular claimants than with the ordinary client. I wonder whether these particular claimants really could and did understand the implications of solicitor/ client fees. And my own personal feeling is that even where they did understand, and even where the solicitor was therefore legally entitled to deduct a fee, that morally they shouldn't have.
