ABS Lawyers Ltd Solicitors in Corby & Maghull, Liverpool:
We try to provide a good selection of potential service providers to people coming through our site looking for legal help. That doesn't mean we're just another directory with hundreds of high street firms competing for space on our pages. That means we try to provide a range of various solutions AND firms that can provide them.
For example legal matters such as a wills or debt recovery or bankruptcy don't always result in a solicitor as being your best first point of contact. There are other options provided by non-solicitor backed companies, or charities, either independent or goverment set up organisations. Plus alternative legal assistance such as barristers through the new Direct Access scheme. If you do need a regular solicitor though, how do you tell the differences between them?
"ABS Lawyers is a modern law firm but retains the all-important traditional values of a customer focussed service"
This sort of sales pitching is across practically every high street firm's website. Luckily there are quite a few good resources to find some deeper and more insightful information about firms that can help you make a decision about which practice or person to use. There are also many things between the lines that the regular consumer might not notice - but we do. We have over twenty years' experience flicking through law firm websites.
"ABS Lawyers are a law firm with over 85 years of combined experience"
There are typically three ways for firms to give the impression that they have the experience necessary to handle your case with great proficiency. One is to quote an ancient founding date such as 'established in 1882!' - but this is essentially meaningless, as there are no 200-year old solicitors working at any firm. You can easily end up with a 1-year qualified lawyer from a 200-year old firm. Second the firm can state they have been 'providing legal services for over twenty years'. Whilst this can fall into the same trap of the branding not always reflecting the experience of the actual lawyer assigned to your case - it is far more geniune a way to describe the firm's experience.
Lastly there are firms that write statements such as the one from ABS Lawyers' site above saying they have X amount of years of 'combined experience'. That means they've added up the experience years of everyone within the firm. So that could be 17 x solicitors each with 5 years experience. Or two solicitors with 40 years' experience and one with 5. (You get the idea.) Therefore if you see lower number such as 'combined experience of 10 years' - that's not a good sign. ABS's 85 years though certainly could be a good indication of real, seasoned professionals available within the company.
"The quality and excellence of our services ensure our clients success and maximum compensation is achieved."
The Law Society of England & Wales is an excellent online source to check on the actual expertise and experience of a firm or the legal professionals within it. If the firm you're researching is signed up to them - wonderful. If not, try searching for a more local law society such as at the county or city level. None of the other such organisations we've seen so far have had the same high level of user-side information that the English/Welsh one does (not even our own Scottish society). But you may get some useful extra bits of info nonetheless.
If you check out the page for this firm you'll see details of their two offices in Corby and Maghull, any alternative trading names, staff listings, languages spoken, case expertise, and so on. They also state qualification dates which is something that could be very useful if you're sceptical of a firm's claims in that regard. In this case, the solicitors certainly aren't 'green'. Two examples are Jenna Hargreaves and Dilip Raveendran, lawyers at the firm who qualified in 2010.
"We ensure that customer service, rather than our profits, is the number one priority."
This is another claim every single firm will make in one way or another on their website. Some go as far as big bold letters with boastful 'the client is king' banners (slightly sexist in our opinion though). Of course, no firm would ever state the opposite of these sentiments. But I'm sure most of you are already aware about the wealth of review boards available these days such as Google Reviews, Trustpilot, Yelp, Yell, etc. So finding feedback from previous clients about how true these statements about quality customer service are, should be easy.
"if someone wants to fight for compensation, their help will be a good choice"
"the topic was already closed and nothing could be won, but under their supervision somehow it moved forward"
"So for me such support from the law firm was very important"
"they will certainly be more effective than legal assistance from Poland"
"the topic was already closed and nothing could be won, but under their supervision somehow it moved forward"
"So for me such support from the law firm was very important"
"they will certainly be more effective than legal assistance from Poland"
Overall the comments left on the independent forums were very positive. Out of these snippets above the last one may sound a little confusing. Indeed the majority of comments we read were written very strangely. However you should notice the 'translated' note next to those. This brings us to one of the main reasons we were very keen to have ABS Lawyers Ltd on our network. They really actively target and can properly communicate with (and therefore surely better represent) Polish speaking claimants.
They are one of the few firms we've seen with a full Polish section on their website. They're comfort with and use of the language extends to their responses to the comments people have left on review boards. The fact ABS is so rare in this regard, is quite odd considering that other than English, Polish is the most commonly spoken language in England & Wales. Just narrowly beating Welsh.
"We are also able to deal with Polish speaking clients and can help ensure legal documents are properly understood and explained."
A quick note on navigation. The official website we link to is www.abslawyers.co.uk and at the moment www.abslawyers.com is owned by a completely different firm in the US. There should therefore be no confusion there, but currently most of the common error/typo variations we would expect such as www.abslaw.co.uk, www.abslawyer.co.uk, or www.abssolicitors.co.uk / .com are not owned by anyone.
The problem with this is that ABS Laywers handle conveyancing which has been the target of huge amount of fraud in the past few years. Thousands of people have simply handed over millions of pounds to fraudsters. Sometimes based on just a couple of official looking emails telling them to suddenly switch to paying their huge house deposit into a completely different bank account. So always make sure you're on the correct site and never discuss payments or bank details via email.
"In respect of Personal Injury & Housing Disrepair, we work on a No Win No Fee basis."
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General Notes: Legal Aid availability changes constantly, so ask up front. If you are looking for a career with ABS Lawyers Ltd it's best to visit the website (www.abslawyers.co.uk) and locate the correct phone/email contact details. Any quoted here will be for potential clients. Alternating or adding words such as ABS Lawyers Ltd may bring up different background/reviews on the firm. Each firm's Law Society and/or SRA number should be on their site too.