Results for My Law Matters:
My Law Matters from Fentimans - Solicitors in Wolverhampton, Manchester, Solihull & Waltham Cross:
It's quite common for law firms to create separate trading names. This can be to highlight a particular case type as a specialty or simply to create a more national branding if their original name is something very local. Sometimes they operate using both the original and new trading names simultaneously. Sometimes they end up pushing the original name into the background in favour of the new branding.
We've been writing law articles for over twenty years now and have therefore worked alongside hundreds of law firms in that time. We were recently asked whether it's common for law firms to create a new trading name because their existing name has a bad reputation. We can honestly say that in the past two decades we've never seen that happen. Bad firms will tend to just close down and start up a brand new operation to make sure they get completely away from the negative press. So when you see statements like this:
on any law firm's website - then we certainly recommend doing some background on both names. But there are no negative implications we know of for firms having different brandings. A good place to get information on this is actually a firm's local law society. Fentimans are registered with The Law Society of England & Wales which is great because it has the best user-side offering we know of out of such organisations.
They provide all alternate trading names, other office locations, languages spoken, case types handled, and the qualification dates of each solicitor within the firm. That can be a huge help because for some reason, law firms are quite obsessed with quoting founding dates. More so than even the clothing industry which is saying something.
Compared to the huge number of legal offices claiming 'established in 1881' or even older dates, this claim of '1986' seems almost new. But how old a firm's branding is quite meaningless if a 200-year old firm gives you a 1-year experienced solicitor to handle your case. According to the law society website, the solicitors behind My Law Matters have a range of entry dates into the legal professional. The titular Nicholas Fentiman qualified in 1979, with various other solicitors joining after - right up to Nila Brailey who qualified in 2007. A mix of genders, ages, and years of experience amongst staff can only be a good thing for a law firm. Seasoned expert hands alongside fresh legs.
The firm does have various local offices across England including Wolverhampton, Urmston (Manchester), Knowle (Solihull), and Waltham Cross. But the main thing people tend to look for when researching any firm is their online reviews. When it comes to trading names of companies this can involve a little more work. But as long as the separate branding efforts have been strong (as Fentimans seem to have done with theirs), you should be able to check out reviews on the team you will be using plus the main firm behind it without any issues. My Law Matters do display customer reviews on their website:
"From start to finish, a professional and polite service from all the team"
"very pleasant to talk to on the phone and replied to emails promptly"
"Very pleased with services and advice supplied by your company"
But they are not the usual testimonials obtained through feedback forms or such. They state these are reviews copy/pasted from the Trustpilot website. Of course, even when firms do this they typically only copy the positive reviews to paste on their own website. That's probably why only 8% of you voted last year that you took company website testimonials into consideration when evaluating a service provider. Most of you wanted to see independent review boards that also contain negative reviews. That's a fair enough thing to want though. Because whilst many negative comments can be totally unhelpful (e.g. the one word capitalised and heavily exclamated 'AVOID!!' hysterics) - if there is a general complaint theme that can shed some light on any flaw's with the company in question, that can be very helpful. So what are third party boards like Google, Facebook, Yell.com, etc. saying?
"efficient and dedicated staff"
"really impressed by the online client portal"
"always on the other end of the phone updating me and never to [sic] busy"
Again there are plenty of positive bits of feedback as these snippets show. However there were some negative comments that really need to be read. In fact, that's something we always recommend when it comes to law firms. Because quite often a low star rating is not due to ratings from genuine customer reviews like you'd expect. When it comes to legal services, often the losing side in a case will leave a bad review. There's also frequent bad comments from people who's case was considered ridiculous and refused to be taken on. We've even seen a divorce client leave a one star rating on a criminal law firm for not handling divorces. (No, really.)
Whilst there is a negative comment about this firm on Google like we mentioned before (i.e. the other side's client left negative comments after a case) - you should also be wary of review boards when it comes to any firm that handles property matters. 9 times out of 10 the client feels a property sale should have gone faster or blames their solicitor for problems with independent survey reports that are out of their control. The largest conveyancing firm in the country has over 1500 reviews on Google and just a two star rating. It's certainly something to bear in mind.
A quick note on navigation as we're dealing with a trading name and one with three generic keywords in it: 'my', 'law', and 'matters'. This can sometimes cause search issues but the variants we tried such as 'my legal matters' still brought up the correct firm. The official site we link to above is www.mylawmatters.co.uk but www.mylawmatters.com does not redirect you there.
Either way we would still recommend bookmarking the correct site because the firm deals with property which has become a huge target market for scams. Sadly thousands of people have handed their house deposit over to scammers after simply receiving an email stating the payment details for their solicitor had changed. The client then handed tens of thousands of pounds over to the fraudster without bothering to check with the law firm whether the change was correct. It can therefore be a good idea not to type important web addresses into the browser bar incase you make a mistake and succumb to a phishing site too.
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General Notes: Legal Aid availability changes constantly, so ask up front. If you are looking for a career with My Law Matters it's best to visit the website (www.mylawmatters.co.uk) and locate the correct phone/email contact details. Any quoted here will be for potential clients. Alternating or adding words such as Fentimans My Law Matters may bring up different background/reviews on the firm. Each firm's Law Society and/or SRA number should be on their site too.