solicitors cost

Hi can you advice if the following is reasonable.

I am in the process of completing and exchanging e forms this so far has taken 5 months just on the e forms.

last month received a bill for £580 pounds and included 4 letter in and 4 letters out. I only saw solicitor once to drop of the e form, I queried what the 4 letters out were and one was a stamped receipt acknowledging payment for previous bill, one to myself and one for payment to a barrister which I had seen for one hour, they charged me £20 each just to adknowledge receipt of payment. The other 2 letters included one to my husband solicitor a copy of which I never saw and one to myself which at the time of questioning was on her secretarys desk and therefore at the time date was not sent to me... I was concerned this could get lumped into the next statement.

I have now received another bill for this month for £380 for 7 letters out and 5 letters in. I am only aware of 3 out and 2 in. I asked for a breakdown of these letters as I wanted to make sure I am not being charged twice but I did not get it again with this bill.
Can I demand a breakdown on what each of the letters in and out are?
Also if a form was missing from the original documents and then they need to be sent out again with another letter asking for a signature is this reasonable if it was there mistake to charge me again for sending the documents?

Thanks for any advice re this..

Hope someone can answer your post soon as i too have same probs and have had for nearly three yrs so keep pestering and checking with your sols let them know your on the ball, wish i had.

Good luck x

muchtoomuch x

It is a fairly common query raised about the number of 'routine communications' as we call them. A solicitor may be sending letters to you, the other side, the court, valuers, counsel etc. - it would be severe waste of postage and trees if you were to receive copies of everything.

However, when I prepare bills I don't charge to acknoweldge receipt of documents of monies unless there is a specific request to do so. A letter sending a bill should not incur a charge unless the letter deals with other issues.

You can request a breakdown of the letters and telephone calls - as the numbers of items are small this should be fairly straight forward. However, it sounds like any work in preparing the breakdown and/or reporting to you may incur further charge.

If you are unhappy with the charging structure check that it accords with the terms of conditions that you should have received at the outset of the case and if you are not happy you can transfer your instructions elsewhere.

In relation to your final point, any error that requires correction should not be charged to you - that would be any corrective work carried out and the relevant correspondence to send out new documentation.

Charles