Solicitor who charged €246 for storing a will told to refund it by the LSRA

Brendan Burgess

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Solicitor who charged €246 to store mother’s will among 600 complaints to legal services regulator

Regulator received almost 600 complaints against lawyers in six months to March
www.irishtimes.com

Post edited to include text from LRSA report. Most people had not read this text when posting their comments in this thread.


Misconduct complaint with public interest issue

Type of Complaint: Misconduct


The complainant was the daughter of a woman who had made a will with the solicitor. As the executor appointed to the will, the complainant asked the solicitor to hand over the will so she could instruct
a different solicitor to handle the administration of the deceased's estate. The solicitor charged the complainant €246 as a storage fee for the will. The solicitor claimed that this was justified on the basis that the original charge of €80 for making the will was heavily discounted in the expectation that the same firm would also be instructed to deal with the administration of the estate. The solicitor said
this had been explained to the complainant’s late mother at the time the will was made. However the solicitor was unable to produce any evidence of that.


Outcome: Complaint Upheld


The solicitor refunded the storage fee to the complainant. However, the LSRA determined that there
was a public interest issue in this complaint and it was referred to the Complaints Committee for further investigation. The Complaints Committee determined that under no circumstances could handing
over the will to the complainant be made conditional on the payment of the storage charges. While a sanction was not imposed, the legal practitioner was given a warning.


Lessons for the Public


You are not obliged to instruct the law firm that drafted a will in order to deal with the administration of the deceased’s estate.


Lessons for Practitioners


The legal fees charged for drafting a will are no different to any other legal costs, and they should be discussed and agreed with the client. All charges relating to the making of a will should be set out in writing and approved by the client.
 
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This seems like a first cousin to the solicitor who wanted €500 to recognise his own signature covered elsewhere here recently.
 
T McGibney said:
No they don't. It's not their job to referee petty fee disputes.
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they don't get to just 'ignore' complaints. there's a decision process to determine if a complaint is admissible and they have to follow that process, regardless of how small an issue you believe it to be, it wasn't a small issue to the client.
 
DannyBoyD said:
they don't get to just 'ignore' complaints. there's a decision process to determine if a complaint is admissible and they have to follow that process, regardless of how small an issue you believe it to be, it wasn't a small issue to the client.
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It was still a small issue. The primary roles of the LSRA are to ensure that there are processes in place to confront and resolve cases of malpractice within the legal profession and also to safeguard money held on client accounts maintained by solicitors.

It is, again, not to referee petty disputes like this.
 

Yep, I'm with the solicitor on this one. I suppose the LRSA was so scared of bad publicity that it decided to act as Lady Bountiful - with someone else's money!
I assume that €46 of the fee charged would have been for VAT.
 
It's interesting that some people are relaxed about a certain level of malpractice.
 
This seems like serious malpractice to me.

Granted the amount is small. And they reduced a solicitor's fee from €10,246 to €10,000 , I don't think it would qualify as overcharging.

But in this case,
The solicitor wanted to do the administration of the estate.
As he was not given it, he charged for storage.
He refused to give the will until the fee was paid.

It is anti-competitive.

Presumably, if he sent a note to the client in advance that he would charge €246 for storage it would be ok.

The LSRA felt strongly enough to issue a warning.

Brendan
 
JimmyB99 said:
It's interesting that some people are relaxed about a certain level of malpractice.
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It's equally interesting to note that some people appear to want everything for free, irrespective of the actual cost to the service provider!
I would consider it wholly legitimate of a solicitor to levy a small charge for storing a valuable document in his or her safe or strong room for a number of years.

Mind you, when I see the composition of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority Quango I'm wholly unsurprised by this textbook example of nitpicking.
 
Absolutely.

Imagine if this solicitor had lost the will. The LSRA would be on them like a ton of bricks.

Long-terms storage of a will only makes sense to a solicitor if they stand to earn fees from its later processing post-mortem. Where that prospect doesn't come into play, of course it's reasonable to charge a small fee for its retrieval.
 
Shirazman said:
It's equally interesting to note that some people appear to want everything for free....
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Again, I'd be interested if you have any evidence to support that comment.

It seems certain posters are happy to simply make things up!
 
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