Victims of the Legal Profession / Victims of Irish Solicitors Society

A new domain, RateYourSolicitor.com has been purchased by the VLPS. It will be similar to the popular RateMyTeachers.ie site. Contributions from members of the public are very welcome, please send to lawyercatcher@lawyer.com

Rainy - Many thanks for this! It could be the beginning of a safer more ethical legal profession, much needed in Ireland especially as the society goes through rapid cultural and social change.

Woo Hoo!!!!! Start watching over your shoulders now

Aren't the the website and email addresses a bit loaded and suggest that they may only be interested in negative feedback? Wonder how many of those people who ranted about the inequity of anonymous (critical) feedback on RateMyTeacher will turn a blind eye to the same approach being taken with another paid profession?

I am not a lawyer by the way.

ClubMan said:

Wonder how many of those people who ranted about the inequity of anonymous (critical) feedback on RateMyTeacher will turn a blind eye to the same approach being taken with another paid profession?

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Just for the record, when I checked out RatemyTeacher for my old school, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of feedback was positive, the vast majority of feedback was sensible and responsible (even where critical). There were a very small number of silly/slagging off posts.

Having just had a look at the VLPS site, I would not be encouraged to post anything on it.

Overall, it just looked like a collection of rants - with lots of allegations stated as facts. Some of these may indeed have some substance to them - but everything was presented in far too extreme a form, to encourage any reasoned argument or discussion (like we have here on AAM all the time !).

Ditto euroD, although note the different sites - one is rate the lawyer the other is crooked lawyer.
I wonder if we had a website "lawyers fees" would it work? I bet they would get you to sign up for non disclosure

If there was a RateMyWebsite site then RateMyTeacher wouldn't be scoring very highly. Advertisements designed to look like Windows Error Messages is an instant turn off for me, I do'nt waste my time looking any further.

-Rd

Surely the legal profession will move swiftly to shut this website down?

The ASTI abandoned plans to go after RatemyTeachers following legal advice. If it's based in the USA, its pretty much immune under their 1st Amendment (freedom of speech)

Didn't somebody manage to get an Irish political gossip website closed down a few years back even though it was hosted in the US?

ClubMan said:

Didn't somebody manage to get an Irish political gossip website closed down a few years back even though it was hosted in the US?

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Ah Cogair - Happy memories! They outed the killers of Veronica Guerin long before there were any trials & prosecutions.

Anybody remember the story about its demise? There was some real (potentially libellou/slanderous) rubbish on it too but some of it was quite funny (at somebody else's expense obviously)!

from the Irish Examiner - July 1998.


Irish political hot gossip Internet site shuts down

COGAIR, the anonymous web site on the Internet with the professed "aim of shaking up the cosy corruption in Irish public life," closed its operations last week.
"We do not have the resources to keep it fresh and up-to-date,¼ the providers explained in a parting message. ¬We may return to the net if time allows and circumstances require."
This web site, which claimed "a greater audience than TnaG and Radio Ireland combined," was the cause of some consternation in political circles. It published the kind of newsroom gossip that never gets in any Irish newspaper, because it could not be defended successfully in a libel court, or because it related to the private lives of even the most prominent politicians.

To get back to the original posting, I saw that head guy from the Law Society on TV recently trying to distance himself from the double charging and thieving that so many of his members were involved in. When pressed about striking the offenders off, or going to the guards to press charges for theft or deception, have just prevaricated. It was really sickening.

On a day to day basis, I deal with victims of abuse by the Catholic church and others. To see these Irish solicitors abuse them again is just sickening.

so many of his members were involved in.

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Care to back this up with numbers? As far as I am aware very few firms were even involved in claims to the residential redress board, and not all of the firms involved in such claims have been the subject of a complaint. Therefore I think it is safe to say that the alleged ( and not proven as yet) double or over charging by solicitors is related to a very small minority of firms.

Hi Vanilla! Of course there are some very fine solicitors, some of whom do more than anyone outside the profession would believe to help their client, and of course there are fine ethical practices.

However there are always a minority who dont meet ethical or requisite standards.........in every profession! Perhaps what makes this more poignant in the case of the solicitor is that the legal profession is the port of call - for all of us - in addressing problems of rights, justice, responsibility and law-and-order in our relationships with others - often family members.

Given the likelihood that the issues 'members of the lay public' bring to the practice are matters of dispute and often the source of pain and confusion, if and when the public encounter a secondary conflict around rights, justice, responsibility and ethics with the professional (solicitor, barrister etc.) upon whom they have total dependence as 'expert', then that is a very tough call. Of course most solicitors do a good job but like some doctors, or dentists, or teachers, or priests, some don't! In the case of things going wrong with the lay person's relationship with a solicitor in Ireland, the arbitrator is The Irish Law Society. In a crisis situation I appealed to this body for help and was advised they could not comment advise or intervene in their members' affairs and suggested I find myself another solicitor to take up the issues I had with the first!

The icing on the cake? When after visiting no fewer than SIX practices and explaining a complex situation to each of them only ONE was prepared to take on the work with the pre-requisite that as he didn't know how long the case might take he required 1.5K "up-front" to cover his expenses. I'll stop there!!!!

Self-help organisations or independent groups monitoring the professions constitute no threat whatever to ethical practitioners in any profession. The only people who would object, resist, fear openness and publicity of 'the facts' would be the small but nevertheless significant minority whose behaviour diminishes the reputation of the legal profession and whose approach to dependence of their clients adds to their distress.

Self-help organisations or independent groups monitoring the professions constitute no threat whatever to ethical practitioners in any profession

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I agree, however having had a look at the website this thread relates to, I'd hardly call it an objective independant group.

You mention that the Law Society is the regulatory body for the profession. This is correct. However what you don't mention ( and what people don't want to hear while solicitor-bashing) is that the complaints committee is not solely made up of lawyers. It also has members nominated by IBEC, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and among the members is none other than Carmel Foley, the Director of Consumer Affairs, who is a champion of the ordinary consumer. I also read recently that the former Chairman of the Competition Authority rejected recommedations that self-regulation by the legal profession be replaced by a state agency.

Vanilla - I haven't looked at the site in question at all as anonymous comment, account or attack are not my style; I put my name to everything I do and feel others should, also.

That does however raise the issue that in a small country like Ireland going public can have huge repercussions and consequences both for the person who complains and those the complaint is made about and is an inhibition to good practice. For example here under NHS in theory people can change GP at will. In practice few people do however difficult their relationship with the GP because the doctor whose practice they request transfer from has privileged dialogue with the doctor the patient seeks to transfer to! This issue is partly addressed - after years of neglect - by Patients' Rights legislation and new rights of access to GP records.

The Irish Law Society makes judgements ab initio on what cases/issues go through to the Complaints Committee which favour (of course - it is their professional body!) the position of its members.

"The icing on the cake? When after visiting no fewer than SIX practices and explaining a complex situation to each of them only ONE was prepared to take on the work with the pre-requisite that as he didn't know how long the case might take he required 1.5K "up-front" to cover his expenses. "

Hi Marie,

I have a real problem with accpting the validity of complaints relating to the type of scenario outlined here. Twenty or Thirty years ago, solicitors did not compete in any meaningful way on price. There was a much stronger sense of community in the legal profession; it was considered not the done thing to turn away business just because it was awkward or potentially troublesome. Nowadays, solicitors (like many other professionals) are under pressure to compete on price; they are under pressure to make a profit on every transaction; they are told that competition is always a good thing. Now, for the vast majority of consumers of the more commoditised legal services, this is undoubtedly true. But the public simply cannot have it both ways: if solicitors are being exhorted to compete for business (as they undoubtedly do) then the clear and logical corollary to this is that solicitors, in organising their business, must be free to concentrate on areas where they can successfully compete. Even in this environment, many solicitors every year take on cases where the plaintiff has no hope of paying unless they win.

Ultimately, your failure to find a solicitor to take on a job does not make you a victim of the legal profession. Arguably, it makes you a "victim" of the free market, but that debate has already been played out - the free market is here to stay.