Taking debt collection away from solicitor?

Woody60

I run the administartion for a small company in the construction industry.
Up till now we have been using a local solicitor to handle the overdue debts.
Some of these debts have been settled easily with a solictor's letter, but others have had to go to court for judgements (but one big one keeps getting postponed).
However we are not at all happy with the speed at which they work, nor indeed the apparent lack of priorty they give us.
Would it be possible to take away the cases that have been to court but not settled or have been posponed, and give them to a debt collection agency? If so -what are the implications and possible costs do you think?
(We are in the situation where 2 rather large debts threaten to bring the company down due to cashflow problems, so hurt feelings are not on our list of priorities either towards the companies owing the money or the solicitors!)

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

This would all be covered in their letter of appointment and assignment of the debt. But generally yes you should be able to pay them for all their work to date on their usual hourly basis or agree a settlement to retake the reigns.

ssbob

Hi Woody,

In my previous job I was working as an accounts manager for a large engineering firm(Electrical,Mechanical, Sprinkler & Calibration) at the height of the boom, we had roughly 1,400 directly employed.

As the recession bit(I only left last Sept) I increasingly found it difficult to collect the cash and some of these debts inevitably went to the solictor to pursue through the courts, however we invariably found this method to be extremely slow.

What did help though was speaking to the solictior directly and explaining how vital certain cases were.

In your case I would not advise a debt collection agency over a solicitor, I assume you tried to work out a payments schedule with the companies involved? Can you say what size of money is involved here?

Woody60

Thanks for that.
Two major debts of around 19K and 12K euro each.
Problem seems to be that solicitors are more concerned about their 'bread and butter' cases

ssbob

Woody60 wrote: »

Thanks for that.
Two major debts of around 19K and 12K euro each.
Problem seems to be that solicitors are more concerned about their 'bread and butter' cases

Even if you secure a judgement then you are not guaranteed to get the money, are the two companies you mention(19k and 12k) still trading, if not it is unlikely you will ever see a penny of it but you will still have to pay the solictior.

You really need to talk to the solicitor, let me know how you get on.