Nine out of 10 solicitors 'overcharge'
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Nine out of 10 solicitors overcharge their clients, a study of billing practices has found.
One solicitor was caught charging for work that he claimed was carried out by private investigators but which he had undertaken himself.
Another submitted a fee for ordering a take-away pizza, while yet another charged a fee for a person carrying a bag to a meeting. One firm billed an insurance company for "making time available to work on the case".
The extent of the "creative billing" among law firms was uncovered during a three-year survey of 7,000 solicitors' bills from across the country.
Ian McLuskie, chief executive of Cost Auditing, the firm that carried out the survey, said: "We found that solicitors were throwing everything they could at the client. The client knows something is wrong but they couldn't be sure."
Cost Auditing found that on average fees were being "wrongly inflated" by 23.5 per cent, while the amount charged ended up being lowered nine out of 10 times – once by £274,000 from £970,000.
Mr McLuskie said the worst offenders were personal injury lawyers in the north-west of England, although no kind of law firm or part of the country could be excluded.
The Law Society said: "This 'survey' has the appearance of a crude marketing ploy by a company that has an obvious interest in portraying law firms as inflating legal bills."
Patrick Allen, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said: "We have not seen any confirmation that costs are out of control."