The Barrister Trap - divorce-solicitor-trap.co.uk

The only ones that win are the solicitors...

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October, 2007

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The Barrister Trap

No! Nine times out of ten you don’t need to hire the services of a barrister. Unless the sums in questions are very high, when it comes to the average case of financial settlement or ancillary relief, paying exorbitant legal fees is unlikely to prove beneficial.

Consider the following conundrum:-

If neither side hires counsel, then they each stand to win with equal probability. The payoff does not involve costs;
If one side hires counsel, then even if they win, the payoff is less after costs;
If both sides hire counsel, then the probability of winning is proportionally the same, but the payoff is less due to costs.

“My solicitor insisted that I hire a barrister. He said I would need the advice of counsel and that if the other side hired a barrister, I would stand to lose. I strongly suspect that the other side was being fed thesame rubbish as I was… Clearly the only people who stood to gain in all this were the legal practitioners! In the end I was left with a huge barrister’s bill and nothing to show for it. I feel I’ve been had…”

TRAP FILE

Hyenas are highly intelligent, hierarchical animals with strategic hunting and trapping methods. Although celebrated for its wisdom and cleverness, the wise hyena symbolises the foolishness of man's wisdom. African tribes view hyenas as greedy hermaphrodites that hunt aggressively without mercy. A hyena can consume up to one third of its body weight in a single feeding frenzy.

You don’t have to hire a barrister. You can even represent yourself.

“The worst of it was, the workload was even doubled, since the barrister knew nothing about my case and my solicitor had to spend time filling him in. I ended up paying twice the charges I should have…"

Who pays for the bundle mountains?

You do...

Litigation should have no place in family law. Legal proceedings should be geared to help divorcing couples not cripple them. Why double costs by having a solicitor and a barrister present at the same court hearing? Current legal structure is not in the interests of the consumer.

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