Results for HooperHyde:
HooperHyde Business Law Solicitors in Solihull:
If you've used our site to look up or read about legal service providers before, you'll know that we don't cram in thousands of firms like a regular directory. We try to provide a range of possible solutions to point people in the right direction. Sometimes you don't need a solicitor. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't need a local firm. Sometimes it can be quite beneficial.
HooperHyde obviously stood out to us enough for them to become included on our site. They are a specialist firm focusing on helping businesses, but also have a different 'feel' to them from firms we already worked with. We currently showcase the regular high-street-style solicitors people have come to expect, as well as some alternative services that act as an in-house legal team of their own.
That's a quote from the firm's founder, Catherine Hyde, about the goals of the firm. Certainly the language across the rest of the company's website also focuses on that mentality of long-term business relationships.
There are many case types where people tend to seek out specialist firms almost to the avoidance of general practice firms. Motoring Offences and Divorce clients have tended to be that way for many years. But these days with the number of self employed people rising exponentially - we've also seen a huge rise in people wanting a specialist business legal advisor that can deal with small businesses effectively.
There are literally (and I'm using the old definition of that word) thousands of legal practices out there stating they are 'modern', 'friendly', and 'experienced'. That's not always the most helpful information for the firm to offer because it's not as if their competitors are going to state they are 'old-fashioned', 'unfriendly', and 'inexperienced'. So how can you tell the crafty sales-pitches from the useful information?
One of the best resources to start with is a local law society. There are national, county, city, and even case specific societies which legal professionals can join. The Law Society of England & Wales has the best user-side offering we've seen across them all. But it can sometimes be difficult to get the information due to many firms using trading names.
The practice of having different brandings for various offices or case types within a firm became even more popular just over a decade ago due to some (both poorly conceived and poorly executed) changes in advertising guidelines amongst solicitors. So don't take the fact a firm is a trading name of another company name as meaning anything at all. It's very common.
On the law society's website you'll be able to see a great deal of information about their registered firms and professionals. If you look up the page for Carbon Law Partners (CLP) you'll see a list of trading names, offices, solicitors within the organisation, languages spoken, and even qualification dates of those solicitors. Why is that important?
The majority of firms will make a statement like this one on the HooperHyde site relating to their experience. Sadly, some businesses use marketing jargon to try and cover up when they don't have a good deal of experience. Hooper Hyde state each lawyer has at least 10 years' experience. That's very clear and easy to understand. But others may state something like 'over ten years of experience within the firm' - which could mean five staff members with just two years experience each. (5x2=10)
That's another great use for the law society website because you can check the actual expertise and experience of individual solicitors within the firms. Certainly the parent company CLP has considerable resources behind it and a huge number of well experienced solicitors. If you check the page for Catherine herself as well, you'll see a qualification date in 2011. Confirming the experience level of the actual lawyer you'll be dealing with is something most people find most useful.
The main thing people tend to focus on when researching a firm online is public reviews in places such as Google, Yell.com, Trustpilot and Yelp. Unfortunately that's not always easy when it comes to law firms. People are absolutely happy jumping online after a good or bad meal to review the restaurant they've just been to. But they're understandably less likely to share their experiences about a messy divorce, criminal charges they are facing, or suing their employer for sexual harassment.
"really understands business risks"
"has represented us in many cases including debt recovery, mediation, and litigation"
Those are snippets from testimonials on the firm's own website. At the time of writing we couldn't find any reviews on the regular third party sites. As stated above though, for legal services that should not be taken as a negative sign. We've known firms with decades of good, reputable history in their area with less than a handful of reviews on the web. The only legal services we've seen consistent reviews on are conveyancing firms because people always have plenty to say about how their house sale/purchase went.
A quick note on navigation. HooperHyde is the branding used but for some reason when you type various related phrases into search engines you sometimes get results for a service called Lawyer365 or Hooper Business Services. They are not related companies. The official site we link to above is www.hooperhyde.com with www.hooperhyde.co.uk not currently redirecting you there. This, and the odd search results, shouldn't be a huge worry though as most scammers tend to target property clients as apparently it's very easy to convince people to transfer tens of thousands of pounds to a fraudulent bank account just by emailing them pretending to be their conveyancer.
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General Notes: Legal Aid availability changes constantly, so ask up front. If you are looking for a career with HooperHyde it's best to visit the website (www.hooperhyde.com) and locate the correct phone/email contact details. Any quoted here will be for potential clients. Alternating or adding words such as Hooper Hyde 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.