Host of Solicitors from Hell-style sites appear following court action
The Law Society spent roughly £150,000 on shutting down the website Solicitors from Hell but faces a latest setback as it has emerged that similar websites attacking UK firms are appearing online, with some said to be hosted abroad to protect them from the British authorities.
The websites Cowboy Solicitors and Solicitors from Hell 2 and a site that mimics the Law Society homepage but calls itself ‘Avoiding Bad Solicitors’ have all appeared online, as has Solicitorsfromhell.com, which is understood to be hosted abroad so that it cannot be banned by UK regulators.
However, Solicitorsfromhell.com’s registered address appears to be in Kent.
It follows the decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat last week to grant the Law Society injunctive relief and order the site, which claims to expose lawyers’ allegedly poor service, to be taken down (16 November 2011).
A domain name search for cowboysolicitors.com shows that the domain was created on 21 September this year, while solicitorsfromhell2.com was registered last Friday (18 November).
The web addresses for Solicitorsfromhell.com and Avoiding Bad Solicitors, however, appear to have been registered as far back as 2008.
It is understood that the owners of Solicitorsfromhell.com were supporters of the campaign by Solicitors from Hell owner Rick Kordowski to exposes solicitors’ alleged bad practice online.
A Law Society spokesperson said in a statement: “The Law Society is monitoring these sites but is not proposing to take action against them at present as they do not pose a danger to the public or the profession.”
Commenting on the cost of the action taken against Kordowski, the spokesperson added: “The Society understands Mr Kordowski has been sued for libel on at least 17 occasions, and over £170,000 in outstanding judgments and orders have accrued against him.
“The cost of the action was outweighed by the benefits of protecting members of the society, who would have had to meet the costs of individual libel actions themselves, and the best interest of the public.”
Kordowski said: “Up until recently it was perceived by the public that the Law Society were there to protect us all from rogue solicitors. This is clearly not the case and the penny has now dropped.
“There will be dozens more [sites] popping up in reaction to Mr Justice Tugendhat’s injunctions against me.”
Meanwhile, Tugendhat J has not yet handed down a written judgment following his verbal judgment last week.
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Readers' comments (28)
Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 2:27 pm
Just get ISPs to block the sites in Newzbin2-style. We must not led rogues besmirch the good name of solicitors.
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Kim Philby | 22-Nov-2011 3:07 pm
At least your Law Society took action. The Irish Law Society is taking no action against a similar site in Ireland leaving individual Solicitors to take costly Libel actiions.
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Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 3:40 pm
That's scuppered my plan to open a law firm called "Cowboy Solicitors" in London.
We were going to provide excellent service and quality advice, whilst dressed in chaps.
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Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 3:45 pm
For those of you who will now no doubt preach the values of freedom of speech, I will provide you with one example of what goes on this site and you can decide yourself whether this site was in fact performing a public duty……a post commented that a solicitor at a large city firm was a ‘slut’ and ‘would sleep around’, including attending ‘sex parties’. Now, although this post was not substantiated by the poster, the name and firm of the solicitor was posted on the site. I anonymously made the affected solicitor aware of this and within a day, the article was removed from the site. I can only assume that the solicitor paid the £300 extortion demanded by the web site creator to remove such posts. Please someone explain why such a web site, or one mimicking it, should be allowed to operate?
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Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 3:54 pm
Besmirch the good name of the progession? What a joke, public surveys show solicitors are broadly as trusted by the public as estate agents.
The high cost of PII illustrates what a dishonest bunch the profession is, only plastic surgeons pay more for PII.
Take that with the utter shambles & incompetence by the SRA & Law Society in issuing practising certificates this year, which everyone is keeping hush about, goes to demonstrate that the only place solicitors are held in high esteem is in their own pea brains.
You need to learn from the Bar.
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Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 4:52 pm
@ anonymous 22-Nov-2011
Do you enjoy surfing the internet to find examples of people supporting the legal profession to feed your agitation?
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Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 5:54 pm
@ Anonymous | 22-Nov-2011 3:54 pm - I dare you to put your name to that post (and not hide behind anonymous) and lets see how many instructions you get from the 'dishonest' 'pea brain[ed]' solicitors. Double dare you!Go on - grow a set!
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Bill Wainwright | 22-Nov-2011 5:59 pm
Daylight is a good disinfectant. Thats what I say. Surf around as much as you want but you won't find better quality than that anywhere. As I said last week, there is always one fellow banging on about how good he is (nearly always a man) but the true test is surely about avoiding the letter going to the wrong person in the first place.
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Anonymous | 23-Nov-2011 9:41 am
Surely its not a question of allowing or not allowing such sites to appear. Anyone can set up a website hosted in some obscure jurisdiction and libel slander anyone they please ... and there is not much anyone can do about it. One has to understand the cause behind this sort of activity and it is in my opinion largely to do with the protectionism afforded to the profession by institutions and process. It is very hard to criticise a lawyer - perhaps that should be made more open with greater quality control. We live in an age of wikileaks etc - the problem needs to be approached in a different way.
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Spenser | 23-Nov-2011 10:12 am
"Avoiding Bad Solicitors" - registered in 2008?
Surely they can't mean my little site.
www.lcs-test.co.uk was a TEST of the Legal Services Complaints (LSC) in the wake of Clementi and The Legal Services Act. The complaints service failed, by the way.
There IS an "avoid" section but it certainly ISN'T a list of bad solicitors ... an it dosn't mimic the law society site. If you take a peek you will see the SOURCE for those solicitors listed is quite reputable (or disreputable - depending on your view of the SRA?)
Nevertheless, lhe gool ol' LS "had a go" back in 2009. I "obfuscated" my version of the logo and it all went quiet.
See http://www.lcs-test.co.uk/logouse.htm
Hardly in the same league as SFH and a long-standing web site hosted in the UK.
Actually, the significant part of the story above (for me) is how EASY it turned out to be to thwart the LS. They spend £170,000 and all the site owner has to do is host abroad - they won't pursue it... sounds like they won';t even pursue UK based sites now, either.
Once bitten... ??? ....
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