Society Spotlight: Practice Advice Service

The Practice Advice Service (PAS) handles more than 35,000 enquiries from the solicitors’ profession every year. These range from what to do when a firm has been scammed by fraudsters to queries on ethics, fixed fees, advocacy, probate, money laundering, law firm management and all the other myriad challenges faced by solicitors every day.

And yet, according to Anjali Mouelhi, the PAS team’s technical adviser and de facto head since July 2013, only around a third of the profession’s 120,000-plus solicitors are aware of the service and its several – free and confidential – helplines.

The helplines are staffed by 10 solicitors, all of whom were previously in private practice and who, between them, have more than 180 years’ PQE. They are scrupulous about confidentiality, never disclosing or even requiring the identity of callers. ‘We know what it is like to practise as a solicitor and so immediately empathise with callers,’ Mouelhi says.

She tells the Gazette that there has been a spike in enquiries lately in three areas. The first is the rise in calls from victims of computer crime where their firm has been targeted. She refers to a probate firm recently defrauded of £2.1m and to two conveyancing firms that lost around £1m each. ‘One of those happened on the last Friday of the month,’ she says, ‘when the conveyancer was busy with completions.’ Litigators are not safe either, she adds. Criminals have found ways to intercept the money paid out in settlement, diverting it to their own accounts and disappearing with it through overseas tax havens.

‘Firms that have been scammed contact the police before coming to us,’ Mouelhi says, ‘but they are often in a state of shock, as we would be if our homes were burgled. The callers often seem on the verge of a nervous breakdown, tearful and sickened at the prospect of their firm having to close down, their careers going up in smoke and the client account frozen. It’s all very, very serious and we do what we can to provide daily support.’

This support includes advising the firm to take witness statements while memories are still fresh. The most valuable witness is likely to be the bookkeeper, who has probably been targeted in person by the fraudsters. ‘Firms should also inform the Solicitors Regulation Authority and their professional indemnity insurance provider,’ Mouelhi adds.

PAS issued an August 2015 practice note, Protecting your firm if you fall victim to a scam, which can be found at tinyurl.com/nn2vf56.

On the principle that prevention is better than cure, Mouelhi offers this advice: ‘It is imperative that firms have their IT systems regularly checked and that all staff are trained not to open unusual emails until they are cleared by their own IT department or IT provider. Fraudsters infiltrate a firm’s IT through emailed malware, which collects information. Other times, they infiltrate the bank where the client account is held. You should always check when someone calls claiming to be from your bank, unless you know them in person.’

Solicitors are also increasingly telephoning in their concerns about access to justice, Mouelhi says. ‘Court fees have risen and legal aid is diminished, with the consequence that solicitors are more often having to deal with McKenzie friends, litigants in person and members of the public trying to buy or sell their own houses,’ she notes. ‘The brunt of the extra work this causes falls on solicitors representing their own clients. For example, if you are acting for the vendor in a property transaction and the buyer is unrepresented, then it falls to you to identify whether the buyer is genuine or is trying to launder money. Normally, this check would be made by the buyer’s own solicitor, of course.

‘You don’t get paid for this. The same applies to the extra time you have to spend in court when the other side is a litigant in person. Or it could be family, employment, welfare or any other area of the law. What it comes down to is people don’t acknowledge that to be a solicitor, you need training. Transactions aren’t process-driven – there is law.’ The PAS can direct callers to a number of articles on the subject of unrepresented parties on the Law Society website.

The third area that has seen a spike in enquiries is lender panels. ‘Banks and building societies are still removing solicitors from their panels,’ Mouelhi says. ‘The housing market is improving and so solicitors are now getting lots of new clients, some of whom say they want a certain mortgage provider. If the solicitor is not on that lender’s panel, the answer is no.

‘The lenders don’t disclose why certain solicitors can’t act for them and clients then make an adverse inference – such as the solicitor is untrustworthy or incompetent. And so the solicitor not only loses the conveyancing business, the client doesn’t come back for future wills, divorces, business advice, lasting powers of attorney and the rest.’

What can the PAS do about this state of affairs? ‘We lobby hard and have managed to persuade some lenders to change their policies.’

Complementing its telephone advice, the PAS team publishes – on its website (tinyurl.com/ognsunp) – a series of advice notes. It provides a multi-party action information service, with details of potential and actual actions, and a list of firms that have registered their involvement in such actions. The website can also help with the details of other Law Society helplines for solicitors, such as the library helpline that provides free help with requests for legal research and other information.