Finding a Decent Solicitor

Legal issues are often difficult to understand and so it is usually best to use the services of a solicitor when entering into any sort of legal agreement or dispute.

There are many solicitors around but how do you choose which one to use?

It will help if you know what sort of solicitor you need – a specialist or a generalist. Specialists are particularly knowledgeable in their chosen area of expertise and are therefore very useful to have on your side if you are in need of advice in certain areas of law. You will find that solicitors often have several specialisms such as Wills and Probate, Court of Protection and Tax.

The first thing that you might do to go about finding a suitable solicitor is to ask friends and family if they can recommend anyone. This is a useful way to go about things because if they do suggest anyone, the suggestion will be coming from a reliable source and so the solicitor is more likely to be a good match for you.

If you can’t get a personal recommendation then you will need to find a solicitor yourself. The easiest place to start is on the computer. Look up solicitors in your region by searching for something like ‘solicitors Salisbury’ or ‘solicitors Southampton’. You will find that there are quite a few that are shown just on page one of the results. Anything shown under ‘ads’ is an advert. These can be trusted less because a company is paying their way to the first page listings rather than using the organic method where (in very basic terms) links from other websites act as an endorsement for a site and help get it to the first page.

If you are after a specialist solicitor, try including that in your search, e.g. ‘residential conveyancing Salisbury.’ This will return solicitors that cover the precise area of law that you need.

When you have found a few firms on the web, try and find testimonials and feedback. If you see some good things about all of them, you will need to narrow down which solicitor you are going to use. This can be done by looking at where they are located (although it will be sensible travelling a little further to get to a better solicitor than just going with the closest one). You can also call up a few of your shortlisted firms and see if they impress you on the phone. Don’t be worried about asking what experience they have and what their success rate is for similar cases.

You can also go to the website of The Law Society and search their lookup facility. They have information on what to expect, guides to common legal problems, and how to sot things if they go wrong. All listed solicitors in their ‘Find a Solicitor’ section will hold a license to practise from the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

If you get yourself a good firm of solicitors, the chances are that you will build up a useful relationship with them and if you need legal help again you already have someone to turn to.