Free advice

When do you get anything for nothing these days?

Well, we are usually happy to talk to you initially without any charge on the matters we specialise in. This consultation (at a short meeting or over the phone) allows us to see if we can help you (and if you want us to) and what may then need to be done.

Sometimes we are able to give you free advice to solve matters there and then. But lots of things are more complicated than that and will need a closer look.

Please don't abuse this initial generosity, however, as we are in business and we have to maintain our rich and lavish lifestyles somehow, by trying - at a fairly early stage - to figure out whether and how we might get paid for at least some of the work we do.

In accident/injury claims we can almost always offer you a no-win no-fee arrangement, if we think your case has good prospects of success. That means we take the risk of not getting paid if the whole thing goes belly-up, and so we try not to take too many cases which appear destined to fail. (If yours is one of them, then we'll try to tell you, tactfully of course, at an early stage). In successful cases, where your liability for costs is met in full by the opposing party, you usually pay nothing and can keep all of the damages recovered for you.

If you qualify for public funding in matrimonial/family cases, then we may be able to apply for funding which means that you pay nothing or at least a reduced amount toward the running costs of your claim.

So involving a lawyer doesn't necessarily mean that we will require you to part with your hard-earned cash the moment you walk through our door. We try to be as flexible as we can in discussing and agreeing the funding of your case.

Many of the posh firms we've heard about do work without charge and call it "pro bono". This seems odd to us as we would have thought that the lead singer of U2 has enough money to pay for legal advice. Still, there we are, the workings of these big law firms are and will ever remain a complete mystery to us. WE ARE DIFFERENT!