The Law Society sent a letter of claim to the owner of the Solicitors from Hell website last week, as it prepared to launch a class action against him on behalf of the profession.

The letter demands that website owner Rick Kordowski must close the site, or face an action for defamation, harassment and breach of the Data Protection Act.

More than 300 individual solicitors, law firms and others have joined the action against Kordowski, having been affected by the site. The action is also being brought on behalf of the profession as a whole.

The letter of claim, sent by the Society’s solicitors Brett Wilson, points out that Kordowski has been sued for libel on at least 16 occasions in relation to the website.

It notes that more than £150,000 has been awarded against him in damages, which remains unpaid.

Brett Wilson said its analysis of the 990 postings on the site between 15 April and 10 August 2011 indicated that the site serves ‘no legitimate purpose’.

It said the site was a ‘magnet for the vexatious and bitter whose complaints would not stand up to scrutiny in any impartial tribunal or forum’. In many cases the author is a disgruntled opponent, the firm said.

The Society’s letter of claim sets out a schedule of undertakings on which it seeks agreement from Kordowski. These include an undertaking to remove the entire site from the web and not to publish any of the content in future, or set up any other website with a similar name.

A Law Society spokeswoman said: ‘Not all solicitors defamed on the website can afford the time and trouble to bring a case themselves, and the Law Society is taking every possible step to protect our members and the public interest.’

Kordowski said he denied all the allegations made against him. He pointed to the high levels of complaints against solicitors received by the Legal Ombudsman, and said the Society had rejected his offer to work together to expose wrongdoing in the profession.

In a separate development last week, Kordowski lost two applications to appeal earlier judgments against him won by Megan Phillips, solicitor at London firm Bhatt Murphy, and Juliet Farrall, solicitor at London firm McCormacks.

In Farrall’s case, Sir Richard Buxton held that Kordowski’s ‘argument that he offered the claimant the alternatives of excusing herself to him or paying a substantial amount of money, in each case to secure the removal of the posting, casts a dire light on the way in which he conducts his business’.

He added: ‘The need to control the applicant’s activities’ had made ‘considerable demands on the court’s time'.