Legal fees... normal to get quote before work is done?

St1mpMeister

Is it usual practice for a solicitor to issue a bill for work they've done "in addition" to work that you were quoted for?

e.g. I agreed a fee with my solicitor last month to perform action A.

They did that, and I paid the fee in full.

Today I received a bill for work done in addition to performing action A (essentially time spent answering some basic email queries about how action A had progressed).


I've experienced this with 2 separate practices now... charging for emails but without warning me that the time spent answering these emails is racking up charges.

The emails were simple one-line affairs, rather than extensive legal queries, such as "when will you be available to perform action B", or "can I get a quote for performing action B" ?


according to: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/justice/court_offices/office_of_the_taxing_master.html

your solicitor should give you a detailed estimate of the costs expected to be incurred in a case before they are incurred

but I wasn't told that I was being charged for answering basic emails?

Is that normal? As I've said this has happened with 2 different firms.

Credit Checker Moose

You should have received a section 68 letter.

Peregrinus

Your initial letter should tell you the basis of charging (which is nearly always, or nearly always includes, an hourly rate) and also indicate the likely cost of the intended transaction. The likely cost of the transaction estimate will be based on the transaction being straightforward, no unexpected issues emerging, no unnecessary correspondeence, etc.

If you then engage with your solicitor on other issuer, or want to engage in correspondence that isn't necessary to complete your transaction, he can charge for that, at the indicated hourly rate.

In this case you say you instructed the solicitor on action A, and later corresponded with him about action B. If action B is unrelated to action A, or is something over and above action A, he can charge separately for his time spent considering your correspondence, advising, etc. If all you did was to contact him to say that you were considering entering into action B and instructing him on it, and to ask for an estimate, I wouldn't expect him to charge for dealing with that; most solicitors welcome the opportunity to quote for more work. But if, e.g. you were asking him what action B would entail or how you would go about it or whether it would be a good idea, yeah, that's chargeable.