Barrister tried to charge company £77,000 – to recover a debt of £2,000
A BARRISTER who charged a company £77,000 to pursue an unpaid invoice of £2,000 has been ordered to limit her fees after an investigation by the Legal Ombudsman.
Emma Fearn, co-owner of architectural design company Den Interior Design of Brough, East Yorkshire, instructed the barrister to take legal action over the invoice on what she thought was a ‘no win, no fee’ basis, but was surprised by a demand for payment when she asked the barrister to walk away from the case.
She said: ‘We contacted the Legal Ombudsman straight away for their advice. They were extremely helpful and reassuring, very professional. It cost nothing and took about six months to resolve.’
The Legal Ombudsman concluded that the barrister should have been clear about her costs from the beginning, and ordered her to limit her fees to £1,500.
Chief Ombudsman Kathryn Stone said: ‘Service providers should be clear about any costs from the start of a case, and they should provide regular updates throughout. The majority of complaints we see at the Legal Ombudsman are about poor cost information. We are highlighting cases such as this one to encourage greater transparency within the legal industry.’
The Ombudsman dealt with 65 legal complaints made by micro-enterprises last year, which accounted for just one per cent of the 6,500 complaints it resolved in total.
The most complained about areas of law in England and Wales were residential conveyancing (23 per cent), family law (14 per cent), wills and probate (14 per cent) and personal injury (11.5 per cent).
Complaints about barristers, regulated by the Bar Standards Board, totalled 322 last year – about five per cent of the total number of complaints resolved by the Legal Ombudsman in 2015-16.