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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Anonymous | 23-Nov-2011 10:28 am
Bill
"Daylight is a good disinfectant" is utter nonsense when these websites are also advocating smearing **** everywhere.
That's the whole problem with these websites - there's no interogation of the facts. Anyone can write anything.
The best situation would be for the SRA to really knuckle down on those who damage the profession. Not just bad solicitors but also firms which are telling everyone that they're lawyers but don't have any solicitors.
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Anon | 23-Nov-2011 5:04 pm
Out of interest...
www.solicitorsfromhell.com predates Rick K's site by a number of years. It HASN'T just appeared. It is run by a delightful and seasoned Gentleman named Brian.
This article appears to be based on very minimal research - there are MANY protest sites out there - almost every one started by someone who was given a TERRIBLE experience by a greedy self-serving law firm and THEN given the complete run-around by the OSS/CCS/LCS/SRA/Ombudsman - all of whom LIE to protect lying solicitors.
The solicitors on here should stop whinging. If you believe in "self regulation" then get out there and REGULATE... the Flaw Society is the OPPOSITE of a Regulator.
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Anonymous | 23-Nov-2011 5:07 pm
I an earlier post I noted that Rick Kordowski had taken down Solicitors from Heaven as well as Solicitors from Hell. Solicitors from Heaven is now back on-line and is inviting law firms to register!
Interestingly, Solicitors from Heaven is now using an anonymous registrar!
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Bill Wainwright | 23-Nov-2011 5:46 pm
To the Anonymous chap who wrote to me just before 10.30 this morning, I am grateful for your comments (although part of your message did not come out). My point is that if one does choose to surf, and the more one does so, the more one's risen hackles are reinforced by the kind of thing of the letter going to the wrong person. Those chaps who are always bellowing about how good they are and so on cannot all be right. My small Firm has never been on the Hell thing and prides itself on across the board compliance; that is surely the way forward rather than rely on the SAR. Fortune favours the brave!
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Solicitor Networking | 23-Nov-2011 6:43 pm
The LS are interested in protecting members of course. And shutting down the other lawyer rating sites would not be as expensive as the action against SFH I would presume. But the other sites are not associated with Kordowski so maybe a lower priority?
That aside, trying to legislate on the internet is like chasing greased pigs.
Maybe the LS could come up with a more positive version of a site rating solicitors?
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Anonymous | 23-Nov-2011 7:48 pm
All great about freedom of speech etc and how bad a profession we are. If it's to be fair game can we set up a clients from hell website or will I be told that they are all perfect and not deserving - you can't have your cake and eat it.
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Anonymous | 25-Nov-2011 9:28 pm
Does anyone stop to think how easy it would be to allow the public to actually step forward and form a group/panel for monitoring how solicitors perform. There could be something to gain and very little to loose by allowing input from outside forces and a way to compile valuable information for very little cost , if there are members of the public who are willing to volunteer their time. Whats wrong with forward thinking? everyone benefits from knowledge
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Hobson | 28-Nov-2011 11:40 am
Eh, I'm not too worried about the imitators; the more of them there are, the less of a problem they become - Solicitors From Hell diluted by a hundred becomes a case of a few isolated cranks shouting on the Internet. Solicitors From Hell was only a problem because it attracted many hundreds of cranks (along with the occasional legitimate grievance) and gained a lot of attention (and Google traction) - something none of these imitators look like doing.
"Solicitors From Hell 2" seems to be a lengthy and unreadable list of Google search terms concerning one particular firm, and duplicates content that this one disgruntled party has spammed across many, many websites. "Cowboy Solicitors" appears to have an even lower fact-checking threshold than the original "Solicitors from Hell", given that roughly half the submissions there seem not to be from actual clients but rather those on the losing end of a case featuring the firm/lawyer in question.
That was always the problem with Kordowski's site - no fact-checking, no investigation, no identification, and no right of reply. I've got no issue with the idea of a site that "names and shames" bad firms - but force people to use their real names and explicitly waive their right to confidentiality, publish complaints only with documentary proof the person was actually a client, and give the firm being complained about a full right of public reply (with the posting being removed if found to be false.) With those three (or four) conditions in place, I doubt SFH would have attracted so much ire from the profession.
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Anonymous | 28-Nov-2011 11:08 pm
Hobson Well Solicitors From Hell 2 must be pretty smart then according to this website it was only registered this month and its already attracting peoples attention.
If you want these sites to go away then the law firms need to clean up their act.
Freedom of speech is important whether it be problems with one law form or not. I did have a read through it and found at least 4 law firms and a lot of information on Libel reform.
I do like a couple of things about the site. these two comments.
Solicitors From Hell 2 will allow people to upload articles about Solicitors from within the UK or anywhere else in the world this will be done automatically & free of charge. Should a complaint arise we will require evidence to substantiate your complaint. or the removal of the offending post or words will take place.
And
Further should anyone claim that any item is defamatory and can prove the information wrong then the post will be removed free of charge.
I think that sounds fair to me.
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F Flintlock | 30-Nov-2011 12:57 pm
Hobson is misinformed in that the more websites there are for people to post complaints against lawyers, then it naturally follows that, given time to propagate, there will be more individual links in search engines naming the firm.
The alleged ‘cranks’, as Hobson describes them, were probably perfectly normal citizens before they suffered at the hands of a lawer. ‘Cranks’ that need to air their justified grievances and will do so at any given opportunity.
For Desmond Hudson of the Law Society, perhaps it’s a case of ‘better the devil we know’ and consult Mr Kordowski on this matter – before its get out of control!
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