Waterstone Partnership Solicitors Ltd: Info
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Waterstone Partnership Solicitors Ltd in Bradford: Review
Today's article is based on the firm Waterstone PS or Waterstone Partnership Solicitors to give it the full title. At the time of writing it looks as though the firm are in the middle of updating their website with a holding page stating this is taking place. That got us thinking. Because although practically every law firm has a website these days, what if the firm you've been recommended to online or by friends doesn't have a site for you to look through about them or their services? All you see is:
First thing to do is definitely not make snap judgements. Company websites can crash or require maintenance or updates that might require the original site to be taken down. Sometimes a holding page is shown, sometimes just a flat out error page. We've known several firms (us included) that needed to take a website offline for days or even weeks because of issues with hackers or just Google messing around with the indexing. It's not as if 'no site' means the company has shut down for a while.
Fortunately for people living in England and Wales the Law Society covering your two countries (we're in Scotland) has an absolutely amazing amount of information available to the public about the legal professionals registered with them. This includes any alternative trading names, contact details, areas of law covered, languages spoken and so on. Very often you can find more useful information from The Law Society of England & Wales than on some solicitor's own sites. As some tend to pack their pages with nothing but sales pitches.
But even if the firm you're checking on does have a website, we still recommend taking a look at the law society's site. Because they also provide the qualification dates and areas of law focused on by each solicitor. That means you can get a good idea of the expertise and experience of the person you're actually thinking of handling your case. For example, for Waterstone they list solicitors Rayhan Ahmed who qualified in 2009, Akeel Hussain (2015), and others right up to Akaash Hussain who joined the profession in 2021.
This can be incredibly useful because there are a lot of sneaky ways some firms can use to make it sound as if they have far more experience than they do. For example if you see any firm stating 'established in 1881' or any other such ancient founding date - that only tells you how old their company name is. Common sense dictates there will not be a 200-year-old wise old lawyer running the place. So how old the firm's logo really doesn't help you know how experienced the actual staff are.
"available to us 24/7 and really went above and beyond"
"kept me up to date with what's happening"
"made sure I got the appropriate treatment, physiotherapy and medication"
The first place people usually run to when considering any service provider, legal or not, are the comments from prior clients. Of course, if the firm's website is down then there will be no testimonials pages for you to look through. However in our poll a few years back only 8% of you said you trusted such pages on company sites anyway. The snippets above are therefore from reviews posted on the independent forums such as Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, etc. They are all very positive.
But we can't stress enough the importance of reading actual comments and not just relying on star ratings when it comes to comparing firms. Especially in the legal industry, because firms that handle property matters can often have a lower star rating than a law firm that doesn't. This is because in nearly every property buying/selling situation that has ever occurred in the UK - someone will have been unhappy about how long it took. On top of that we've also seen a criminal law specialist receive a negative review for refusing to take on someone's divorce case, and many firm's getting 5 stars for services they don't provide (such as an amazing pizza).
On that point we should cover some notes about navigation generally since leaving a review on the wrong firm is not the only problem that can arise if you're not careful online. There are other firms with 'waterstones' in the name such as Waterstone Legal in London. But as mentioned above this firm is typically branded as 'Waterstone Partnership Solicitors' with their official site at www.waterstoneps.com which is https secure. Your browser should tell you which sites are and are not secure which is important if you are going to submit your personal details via any online contact form.
When there is a difference between the firm name and the web address it is sometimes a good idea to bookmark it just in case. For example www.waterstoneps.co.uk currently does not redirect you to the correct site. Also for finding the correct reviews you sometimes have to enter a firm's location in Google - e.g. 'waterstone partnership bradford'. This is all the more important if you are looking for help with a conveyancing matter because conveyance clients have been targeted mercilessly by scammers in recent years. Many house buyers have handed over tens of thousands of pounds into a fraudsters bank account due to an official-looking email stating the payment account details had changed. Keep safe.
General Notes: Usually if Legal Aid is possible we've mentioned it above, but you can always ask. We haven't looked in depth at their recruitment program so are unaware of any job vacancies available. For a career with Waterstone Partnership Solicitors Ltd it's best to visit the website (www.waterstoneps.com), check opening hours, and find the correct phone/email contact details. Simply emailing a CV to reception looks lazy. Each law firm's Law Society and/or SRA number should be on their site, usually at the bottom of each page.
This Waterstone Partnership Solicitors Ltd article is rated
4.5 / 5 based on 24 reviews. †
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div class="infoquote" "An Award Winning Team of Solicitors With A Personal Touch" /div
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