Lyons Solicitors: Info

Hello. This section below about Lyons Solicitors is scheduled for archiving and will eventually be removed. The information may therefore be out of date. There are more review articles here or you can use our Legal Help search box to find alternate firms in your area. Thank you for your patience.

Lyons Solicitors - Lyons are Personal Injury specialists with a long-track record of taking on and winning new cases or cases that other firms have rejected. They have three branch offices in Bristol and surrounding areas, but can also serve clients across all of England and Wales. They will fight hard to get the right result whilst maintaining a commercial reality on what's best for you. 49 High Street, Westbury-on-Trym, , England, BS9 3ED Link unavailable. Click to see local map of alternatives >> duncanshaw@lyonslaw.co.uk 0117 950 6506

Lyons Solicitors - Law Firm in Kingswood, Westbury-on-Trym & Chew Magna (Bristol): Review

Today's article focuses on the law firm Lyons Solicitors based in Bristol. It's strange to think the internet has only been with us just over two decades because it really feels as though the way in which we shop and hire services has changed more in those 20 years than in the 200 before it.

Prior to online searching, people would have to look up what law firms were local to them either in the phone book or Yellow Pages. That included a small range of firms and often you'd just get a firm's name, address, and phone number to decide whether to give them a call. Only the rich and well established firms could afford a larger advert in such publications. So large firms stayed large and small firms struggled to push their way into the market without good old-fashioned word of mouth.

Of course, the wider range of services available and the massive 100+ page websites for each all full of sales-pitching text brings it's own unique set of problems when trying to find the best provider for you and your legal issue. The most common complaint we hear is that they all look the same. This is quite true though. If you've flicked through half a dozen firms today you'll probably have seen similar names, similar images of people smiling and shaking hands, not to mention the same type of wording.

The quote above is from the Lyons Solicitors website and while words like 'established' and 'progressive' sound great, do you know what they actually mean when it comes to whether they are a good set of lawyers? We also see alot of words like 'friendly' and 'modern' on every site. But since there are no firms claiming the opposite (i.e. that they are 'unfriendly' and 'outdated') then these great sounding words don't help in the pursuit of telling one firm from another.

This is another word that can confuse people when it comes to legal services - 'specialising'. However, despite it looking slightly odd for a law firm to claim it specialises and then rattle off a long list of case types, this can be accurate. A firm that deals only with one case type such as Criminal Law is definitely a specialist firm. On the other hand, a law firm with one solicitor trying to deal with 20 different case types would clearly not count as a specialist. In the middle of this are firms with multiple solicitors, each specialising in one or two areas of law. That's how a firm can 'specialise' in a long list of cases.



All this wording aside, though, we want to tell you about a great resource that can really help you distinguish one firm from another. But first you need to know a key difference in the types of wording some firms use to describe their levels of experience. Because some can be quite sneaky about it. For example if a solicitor states they have 20 years of experience, that's great. But if a law firm states they have '20 years of combined experience' or '20 years of experience within the firm' - that means they've added up all the years between all staff members. So it could be 5 staff with only 4 years of experience each. That's a big difference, but at first glance they may look the same.

Worse than this are the firms that claim ancient founding dates such as 'established in 1881'. These are absolutely meaningless statements and often tenuously connected. How old the brand name of a firm has zero bearing on whether you'll get a good solicitor. You could get a 1-year qualified lawyer from a 200-year-old firm, or a 40-year veteran from a 1-year-old firm. The age of the logo is not important. Lyons makes no such claim.

But this is where our recommend resource - The Law Society of England & Wales - comes in. They have a wonderful, free user side offering which will provide you with trading names, alternative contact details, all office locations, and the expertise/qualification dates of each solicitor within the legal practices registered with them. If you look up the page for this firm you'll see Edward Lyons qualified as a solicitor in 1976, Duncan Shaw in 1994, right up to Anna O'Hara in 2006. You can also check the cases each handles.



Clearly the firm must have a considerable amount expertise and experience based on that information. But the only way to check up on the quote above is to try and find feedback from previous clients. It's common for companies in any industry to provide customer testimonials on their website. Lyons do this as well, but the majority of people (in fact, everyone we know) prefers to read the comments left on public boards such as Google, Trustpilot or Facebook.



The reviews on the independent forums are generally positive like these snippets above. We always recommend reading actual comments when it comes to law firms rather than flicking through basic star ratings when comparing. That may sound like wasting time, but we've been doing this for over twenty years now and can tell you it is highly common to see people reviewing the wrong firm or complaining about something that is out of the company's control. The same issues arise for positive reviews as well. So, take the time.

A quick note on navigation as there are several firms with 'lyons' in the name such as Lyons and Company and even one in the same town - Lyons Davidson. This firm's branding is 'Lyons Solicitors' but the official web address is www.lyonslaw.co.uk not www.lyonssolicitors.co.uk (which shows no site at the time of writing). Other variants we tried such as lyonslaw.com also were not for this firm.



This is hugely important because the firm deals in property matters which have been the target of scammers for many years now. Some people have handed their entire house deposit into a fraudsters bank account. Sometimes simply because they received an official-looking email telling them the bank details had changed. Always make sure you're on the correct website and never discuss payment details via email without confirming directly with the firm that it's genuine.

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 Lyons Solicitors it's best to visit the website (www.lyonslaw.co.uk), 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.

Other Law Firms with Reviews like Lyons Solicitors:

» www.mark-croft-solicitor.co.uk - While statements such as these on some solicitor websites are meant to give the impression of extensive experience - it's pretty much meaningless ...
» www.emdlaw.co.uk - They do claim a long history with 'established in 1918' /b on the About Us page ...
» www.waterstoneps.com - Because they also provide the qualification dates and areas of law focused on by each solicitor ...
» www.keesolicitors.co.uk - Not least with the external social impact of the changing world on the types of cases and new legal precedents coming to the forefront year after year ...
» www.uvslaw.co.uk - While it's very ...
» www.girlings.com - In between those extremes you can also have larger firms with each individual solicitor specialising in certain areas of law ...
» www.harrisonssolicitors.com - If you look up the top conveyancing firms for the country then check their star ratings on the various review boards you'll see some with 3 or even 2 star ratings but still with thousands of customers leaving either praise or tangible hatred over time ...
» www.walkerfoster.com - The thing to watch for /b is whether that helps you distinguish one firm from another ...
» www.murphysolicitors.co.uk - However a poll we ran a few years back indicated that only 9% of people trusted company provided reviews ...
» www.wolflaw.co.uk - We don't recommend using this as a deciding factor on its own though ...
» www.thomasandthomassolicitors.co.uk - They do use some of the wording we mentioned before ...
» www.wymlegal.com - According to the organisation's website ...
» www.eatons-solicitors.co.uk - They also seem to have bought other variants such as www ...
» www.sternberg-reed.co.uk - So what independent facts can you rely on to work out the best firm for you ...

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• Debt / Bankruptcy
• Immigration
• Family Law
• Divorce
• Conveyancing
• Personal Injury

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