Why is this solicitors’ firm making it so hard to sort out my affairs?

D.F. writes: I paid Harraway Solicitors of Cottingham in East Yorkshire in 2020 to arrange Lasting Powers of Attorney. I have had unpleasant correspondence with the head of the firm, Caroline Harraway, who now apparently does not even work for her own business. I was desperate to get the LPAs in place, but when I rang the Office of the Public Guardian, they said no application had been lodged.

I OFTEN clash with solicitors, typically when they threaten me on behalf of dodgy clients. What I was not expecting was the level of chaos I found at Harraway Solicitors.

The proper name for the business is Harraway Law Ltd, though it may not be around much longer.

Its owner and sole director, solicitor Caroline Harraway, has failed to file accounts for 2020. This is an offence, and last month officials at Companies House began proceedings to have her company struck off.

Whether this will worry Ms Harraway is hard to tell. At the end of 2020 she registered a new company, CHS Law Ltd, but this is also in trouble after failing to file legally due details, identifying its owners. She must know what to expect as a result; she previously ran Orion Law Ltd, which was compulsorily struck off in 2019.

Against this background, your own experience is less surprising. You paid £854 to Harraway Solicitors so it would prepare your will and LPAs for your parents.

You received the will, but more than a year later there is no sign of the LPAs. Yet when I looked at your bill, it included disbursements of £164 – the cost of registering two LPAs with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG).

In June, Ms Harraway told you she blamed the OPG for delays, not her firm Harraway Solicitors. But, startlingly, she added: ‘Please note, I am not working at the firm any more.’

In effect, she had walked out of her own law firm, which the watchdog Solicitors Regulation Authority says closed down on July 21.

Where does this leave you? I asked Ms Harraway and she offered to speak to me. She also told me your complaint was ‘misleading’, adding that ‘should anything of that nature be published, I will take legal action immediately for defamation/damage to my reputation.’

She had already prevented another newspaper from publishing anything, she told me. Before the agreed conversation with Ms Harraway, I received an email from a man named Daniel McIntyre, saying: ‘You are now to speak to me, and me only.’

When I asked who he was, he said: ‘You’ll find out who I am.’ Ms Harraway

later told me: ‘He is my PR representative.’ And when I managed to speak to him, it turned out he is also her partner, both in personal terms and in business.

Meanwhile, Ms Harraway did not like my questions, telling me to ‘drop the poor attitude’, and questioning whether I had investigated you, Mr D.F., to make sure you are honest and accurate in what you say.

But the questions just grew bigger. Ms Harraway told me she would do the work for you if you were unhappy with your ‘current legal representative’. What current representative?

She seemed to believe that after closing down her own firm, she could shrug off your work on to the shoulders of one of her former staff, who is not a qualified solicitor.

Mr McIntyre described the worker (who I am not naming for legal reasons) as a freelancer and accused him of pocketing clients’ fees. He was supposed to take over unfinished cases, but failed to do so, though in the event McIntyre provided no evidence for this claim. More than a year after instructing Harraway Solicitors, you still do not have the LPAs, and in the interim, your mother has died.

Ms Harraway at least partially blames you, saying you failed to return forms, and failed to pay her. She suggested you might have done a private deal with one of her staff and paid him instead. You assured me you did return forms, and were told they must have got lost in the post.

A second application was spoiled, you were told, because a staff member got his own name wrong in the paperwork. And your bank has come up trumps, providing proof your cheque to Harraway Solicitors was banked by the law firm last year.

Caroline Harraway did offer to complete the LPA work herself, but understandably, you declined.

I asked whether your money was still held by her firm, but received no answer. This investigation has taken two months, and as recently as Wednesday, McIntyre was still saying he would provide evidence that his partner’s law firm was not to blame. Nothing arrived.

If you look at the Harraway Law website now, it says: ‘Caroline Harraway Law has had a minor restructure to adapt to the current climate, and our online home is having a makeover to make life easier for colleagues and clients.’

This is like saying the Titanic’s encounter with the iceberg was a ‘minor restructure’ requiring little more than a new paint job.

If the Solicitors Regulation Authority is not already investigating today, I am sure it will be tomorrow morning.