Results for England & Derbyshire LLP:
England & Derbyshire LLP Solicitors in Guildford and Woking, Surrey:
There are alot of law firms to choose from. Not only that, there's a lot of different types of legal professional to choose from. These days, for many services, you don't even need to go to a typical high street solicitor. With all this choice available and the entire internet at your disposal - how do you pick the best legal help for you?
First thing is to make sure it's an actual legal services provider. There are hundreds of websites set up to look like they provide law-related services, but they may just be a "case reseller". This means that once you enter your details into their website, they will then sell your details on to an actual law firm. To avoid this there are a few things you can check.
For today's article we're going to use the law firm England & Derbyshire LLP as an example. As you can see from this snippet from their front page, they use the words "law firm" and "solicitor". But to be sure a website is not misleading you with clever wording, it's best to check for an SRA number. The SRA is the Solicitors Regulation Authority and you can see - this firm is definitely registered with them.
What else can you check up on? Well, most firms make some sort of 'experience' claim. This can be either the number of years the firm has been running, the number of years the longest serving solicitor has been working, or the number of years of the staff members combined together. Those are very different from each other. The easiest way to check up on the experience of the actual staff at the firm is to look them up on their Law Society page.
The Law Society of England & Wales is a great resource which will not just show you the qualification dates of each solicitor within a firm - but also any alternate trading names they use, other office addresses, areas of expertise, languages spoken and more. If you check the page for this firm you'll see a range of experience amongst the staff. From seasoned veterans to fresh blood. The longest serving seems to have served 33 years as a solicitor.
One thing people often ask us about is whether using a specialist legal practice is better than a multi-practice law firm. That's not actually as easy to answer as you might think. Because sometimes a large firm handling several different types of cases might actually have a specialist solicitor on staff for each one of the case types listed. It isn't always clear when this is the case though and the term "specialist" gets thrown around a lot. We would therefore recommend utilising the law society pages for this as well, because each solicitor will often have their case expertise listed.
Of course, the first thing people usually turn to when researching any potential company they might use - is prior client reviews. England and Derbyshire's website does state a few such comments:
"goes beyond her role to help her clients"
"my life has changed"
A quick note on navigation though. We did struggle with Google a bit when trying to find information. That could be because the firm's name uses terms usually associated with location - i.e. "england" and "derbyshire". Therefore adding extra terms such as "solicitors" or "guildford" may be a good idea.
The official website is www.englandderbyshire.co.uk which we link to above. The .com does not redirect you there though and as you can see, the "&" part of the name is not in the web address. This is because you can't have an ampersand in web addresses. The firm could have www.englandandderbyshire.co.uk but as you can see, that looks really easy to mis-type.
Their website is HTTPS secure for submitting your details via their contact form. All this navigation information is important to note since the number of scams only seems to increase over the years. At the moment the main targets in the legal industry are the customers of conveyancing firms. Many have handed their entire house deposit to fraudsters. So always pay attention to which website you are on and who you are discussing your case with.
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General Notes: Legal Aid availability changes constantly, so ask up front. If you are looking for a career with England & Derbyshire LLP it's best to visit the website (www.englandderbyshire.co.uk) and locate the correct phone/email contact details. Any quoted here will be for potential clients. Alternating or adding words such as England & Derbyshire Solicitors may bring up different background/reviews on the firm. Each firm's Law Society and/or SRA number should be on their site too.