Fukeir Clothing
A rather belated review but one which needs to be posted. We engaged with Porter Dodson back along for an employment tribunal. It all seeded quite straight forward, estimated fees reasonable, potential for pay out good and chances of succeeding high. Or so we thought. Then reality. Solicitor engaged goes sick and we have to pay for new solicitor to get up to speed.. Fair? I’ll let you decide. The total fees ended up being 4 times the estimate given and the explanation offered by Porter Dodson amounted to “we weren’t expecting the other party to put up a fight”. Really… you’re solicitors, this is what you do, day in, day out. The case to court whereby the barrister strongly advised against going into battle, saying the case was not strong enough. This was the first time we had ever been told this. The outcome eventually was an out of court settlement which covered Porter Dodson’s fees and left nothing over. What a waste of a year and an incredible amount of energy. The final insult was when Porter Dodson tried to invoice for the barrister for 4 days, despite him telling us when we walked out of court that he would only be submitting costs for a day. So the conclusion… this was all about Porter Dodson making money. Not anything more. Their advice was poor, their conduct was unethical and the outcome was one which only favoured them. Had AI been around at the time, I could without a doubt have done a better job myself. My advice therefore would be to think very long and hard before engagement with a solicitor on such a matter and if possible, pin your them down to costs at the start because they will happily gobble up your money for as long as you’ll let them, it’s what’s they’re very, very skilful at doing.