AVERTA

Denial of any sense of proportionality in Employment dispute.

I recently needed to offer practical and financial help to a client after his/her unfair dismissal. He/she engaged Alan Jones at Averta who acted for 6 months and I paid fees of over £20,000.00. No solution to any of the elements of the dispute was achieved despite the client's company offer being repeated 5 times with a compromise agreement suggested at the outset. A new solicitor was engaged and he negotiated settlement of all issues with a compromise agreement within 6 weeks at a cost of less than £10,000.00.

Mr Jones' letter of engagement listed features including; estimate of charges, review of costs,aim to achieve satisfactory outcome, knowledge of compromise agreements and proportionality of costs.Unfortunately none of these attributes were exhibited while he was acting. As a negotiated settlement would depend on the surrender of the company shares held by the client a valuation of the company was to prove essential. Mr Jones refused to countenance this on spurious grounds of excessive cost and, in trust or naivety, I and the client believed him until we took advice from an experienced accountant 6 months later. He applied calculations on a profit basis and on net asset basis on the few A4 pages of the company's management accounts,that a court would have considered relevant, to arrive at a similar valuation by each method. This was at nominal cost!!

The client wrote a letter of complaint to Mr David Sykes, the partner at Averta designated to deal with complaints, and 2 months later received a long inaccurate reply with errors of commission and omission. Mr Sykes had no first hand knowledge of the case and did not speak to the client before writing. He lacked the attribute of perceptive document review, appeared to have no training in handling complaints and seemed to rely on what Mr Jones told him. He repeatedly stated that Mr Jones had had difficulty getting instruction from his client despite the fact that the file on his desk contained written repeated instruction from me, his client and an eminent QC (engaged by Mr Jones) to value the company today!urgently! Mr Jones deferred, declined and refused again on spurious cost grounds. Mr Sykes letter made no reference at all to Conference with Counsel probably because instructions from the QC were ignored and during the meeting Mr Jones had to leave repeatedly to answer his mobile. Mr Sykes did not even question other members of Mr Jones' team regarding nearly 100 hours of logged work that produced no outcome and could therefore only be described as "occupational therapy".

The shortcomings of Mr Sykes' response were pointed out to him by the client in a second letter but Mr Sykes failed to write again. I went to the Law Society website and was directed to the Legal Ombudsman to submit a complaint against Averta. I did this and found the process lengthy, fruitless and insulting. For 6 months a lay "investigator" perused papers sent by Averta and by me, spoke to me twice on the phone before writing a Recommendation Report which was inaccurate but suggested waiving the last unpaid invoice from Averta. Clearly he/she thought it was perfectly all right for a client to spend £20,000.00 for legal advice and see no outcome. I was however struck by the investigator's refusal to acknowledge, reflect on or refer to my observation that the papers he/she had showed clear evidence of disingenuous conduct from two solicitors in positions of trust who had abandoned intellectual honesty and professional integrity in favour of income. I and the client rejected the report conclusion and the matter was passed to an actual ombudsman. His/her "Final decision" was posted to us by email 3 weeks later and although the Ombudsman agreed the firm's service was poor the remedy suggested was unchanged. Again I was struck by the Ombudsman's refusal to acknowledge or refer in any way to the issues of professional conduct that I had raised and their relevance to continuing professional development in the legal professions as well as to individual clients. I did also point out to the investigator that this behaviour by both partners in an "experienced specialist employment legal firm" must be very unusual as they would soon have no clients if all were expected to pay £20,000.00 for nothing. I did copy all emails to the deputy chief Ombudsman but apparently he is not permitted to respond to complainants.

I and the client decide to reject the Ombudsman's decision and that is how the matter rests. I am not at all optimistic that submitting this complaint to any other legal body will be fruitful and I no longer believe that the Legal Ombudsman is "independent and impartial".

Signed HR Grant