Finding a solicitor UK can be like a minefield or leap of faith. Thousands of lawyers work in the UK, and some are more helpful than others. You will find attorneys at large corporate firms, with small independent practicing lawyers, and through online services.
When looking for a solicitor for the first time, we recommend that you contact your local office to find out if any lawyers can help you. Depending on the required services, the fee for a lawyer can be very expensive without spending extra money on travel expenses to visit them. If you need them to prepare the necessary documents or evidence that you are signing a document, then a local service may be the best option.
Solicitors usually specialize in one or two areas of expertise. If you need documents to be certified by a solicitor, this often does not make much variation. For complex issues and specialized legal advice, we recommend that you find a lawyer in the relevant field.
Recommendations are often a useful guide. If you know of any friends, family members or colleagues who have recently dealt with lawyers, you may wish to contact them to find out their experiences. If in the past they found a specific lawyer providing professional services, you may want to choose the same solicitor. If dealing with a solicitor firm, you may also wish to research them on the internet as there are likely to be feedback pages created by previous clients.
While many people will use the yellow pages or Google to find a solicitor, you can also look at the Law Society’s website www.qredible.co.uk. This website contains information on all registered solicitors in England and Wales.
Our Find, a Solicitor website, helps you find a solicitor:
- near you
- who offers the services you need
- who meets high standards, known as Law Society accreditations
We collect our information on solicitors from the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
How are solicitors regulated?
The Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) works to protect people from fraud, dishonesty, and misconduct in the legal sector. Their main goal is to maintain a high level of work performed by lawyers and their firms, and to monitor the effectiveness of training people in legal functions.
For existing firms that are regulated by the SRA, a code of conduct is in place to ensure that work carried out by solicitors is in the interest of the client. The SRA has multiple legal powers in the event of anyone breaching the regulations and code of conduct. They range from issuing an individual lawyer with a warning to closing a firm with immediate effect.
Many documents that are processed by the apostille require proper certification of a lawyer. We can arrange verification and certification of many documents in order to save time and money. Our apostille service ensures that when we legalize your documents, we include, whenever possible, certification of a lawyer. If your document must be certified or notarized, you will need to fill it out before sending us the documents.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with one of our team today for advice on the document certification service.