There are many advantages of the internet, for many things, including law.
The internet has revolutionised most businesses, and yes, that even means law ! Previously, it was very difficult for non-lawyers to get to grips with any kind of legal topic due to the cost and general technical authoring of weighty textbooks. Now, there are a plethora of law related sites both created by solicitors and non-solicitors which often break down legal concepts into easier to understand summaries in plain English. Even lawyers are now having to explain legal concepts in plain English ! And, if all else fails, there is always wikipaedia, which remains a fantastic resource.
Having said all of the above, in some circumstances, where important legal issues are at stake, our own personal opinion is that it remains important to seek out a specialist solicitor local to you rather than the growing trend of choosing and transacting with a lawyer online, in a different city, often having looked for a competitive costing.
Most individuals and small businesses will, still instruct small to medium size law firms, typically those with less than 10 partners. Whilst this may mean that there are solicitors in that practice with different specialisms, the smaller the firm, the more you are likely to deal with a generalist. This can have significant consequences in some areas of law. This is not only because some areas are particularly technical and wide ranging but because, like anything in life, experience counts. None of us go to lawyers just to be told what the law is.. Whilst lawyers cannot or should not, make decisions for clients, they should be able to guide the client based on experience.
If you don’t instruct a lawyer with experience of your particular issue, you are taking a big risk. The lawyer may say to you, for example, that he or she is a litigator and can handle an employment case. However, employment law is very wide ranging and a specialism of it’s own and the Employment Tribunals are completely different to the County Court or High Court. This is just one example. If you end up instructing a generalist, the lawyer may well persuade you that you need assistance from barristers. The solicitor will want to cover his or her own backside and may rely on barristers more than would be the case if they were a genuine employment law specialist. And guess who would be paying for solicitors and barrister’s fees ? Yes, that’s you.
Having stated our opinion on the value if instructing a genuine specialist, we also believe atht there are still very good reasons to instruct someone locally, if there is someone in your area who specialises. The realtionship of solicitor and client si still fundamentally one of trust. there are few more important matters than matters which require the guidance of a solicitor.
It is vital that you are content with the person you are dealing with and can gain ready access to that person fora face to face meeting if something important needs to be addressed or a problem arises. You simply won’t get that if you are in one city and your solicitor is in another.
There is also the fact that if too few people use local services, sooner rather than later, there will be no local services. Experience suggests that once those local services are gone and we are forced to use call centres, we don’t like it, and want our local services back….
What do you think ?
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