What They Do

Solicitors are lawyers that deal with legal matters out of court, barrister lawyers deal with in court proceedings. Your first port of call will 90% of the time be with a solicitor although rarely some barristers do accept direct instruction for the customer, this is normally regarding tax and insolvency, for all over issues you need to work with a solicitor. If you are going direct to a barrister, which would be cheaper, but you must know how to instruct a barrister and realise that they will not do the administrative back up, normally produced by your solicitor.

To be a 'solicitor' you need to be a fully qualified lawyer, undertaken a post-graduate education and had two years training within a solicitors firm.

Most solicitors specialise in a certain part of the law, this is to ensure they are experts in one part and have in-depth law knowledge, including all the clauses and contracts used within their specialised area. Although they are specialised in a certain area they will still be able to advise you on most areas of the law, but may advise you towards another solicitor to use.

All solicitors can represent you at tribunals, in magistrates and county courts. Some solicitors are further trained and qualified to support you in 'higher courts', of which were preserved for barristers, until recently. The 'supreme court' is preserved for barristers.

Solicitors need to be registered with the Law Society of England and Wales, Solicitors Authority or Legal Complaints Service.

When encountering a legal problem, solicitors know the laws, where you stand legally and how best to resolve the issue. Solicitors can offer you some advice on how to understand your issue from their eyes, discuss the different options on how to resolve your dispute, help you go ahead with your chosen method of resolution and represent you through your case.

To resolve you issue out of court, these are the most common methods:

• Ombudsman Scheme- This is an option if you have a dispute with an organisation or service, for example, Local councils about housing and education, disputes with the housing associations, NHS, banks, insurers and estate agents.

• Special Schemes- Occasionally you will need to use a specialist scheme to best resolve your issue.

• Negotiation- This is where you or your solicitor tries best to resolve your dispute with another person, for example divorce settlements.

• Collaborative Family Law- You and your disputer use specially trained lawyers to write up and sign an agreement to reach an agreement out of court.

• Mediation- You and your disputer agree to appoint a neutral third party to come to an agreement.

• Evaluation- You and your disputer agree to appoint an independent third party to advise you on the most likely outcome if you go to court or give their opinion on a particular point of law.

• Adjudication- You and your disputer appoint an expert in a particular subject to help you come to an agreement. Some commercial contracts have an adjudication clause, where you have to use an adjudicator, this is often used in disputed about construction projects.

• Arbitration- You and your disputer agree to appoint an independent third party to decide the outcome for you, this is used normally in commercial, international and employment disputes.

• Small Claims Process- with this method you go to court, and they decide the outcome but this is a cheap and simple way of claiming small quantities of money, worth less that 5,000 (or 1000 if it's an outstanding house disrepair claim against your landlord or an injury claim.)

• Court Claim- this is used for any claim/ dispute you have, at any time during your court claim you can use other methods to reach an agreed solution.

• Employment Tribunals- These are used to resolve issues between an employee and employer; this is usually used as a last resort after several other methods have been tried.

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