2024-05-02 Impact of Law Partners misconduct

Currently I have a Law Partners bill for $176,327.71 (including exaggerated barrister fees). Analysis of it shows that it is grossly exaggerated. However, when I look at their impact I am much better off if I never engaged them. There is a good chance I will manage to reduce it through negotiations. However, I will be paying them money they do not deserve to receive.

I write Law Partners, because I mainly include solicitor Gillian Potts, barrister Ken Pryde and some of their assistants. However, my main representation was Gillian Potts acting as an employee of Law Partners.

Impact on claim

The best offer Law Partners got from QBE was $250,000 (all costs included). After all deductions it leaves me very little.

After engaging other lawyers I managed to fix some problems caused by Law Partners to my claim. The final result being $450,000.00 (all costs included). While this result is not satisfactory due to other problems it is safe to say that Law Partners were pushing me to settle lower by at least $200,000.00.

In my complaints to OLSC I provide a list of Law Partners actions that I think is severe misconduct (or at least negligence) that was the cause why Law Partners were aiming at such low settlement.

Financial loss

Law Partners involvement goes beyond poor claim results, they also caused financial loss and lots of pain and suffering.

Paid expenses

Moya de Luca-Leonard fees $30,000 (including barrister fees). I had to engage another lawyer to fix the problems caused by Law Partners and do the tasks they were meant to do in the first place: get a report from a psychiatrist that specializes in PTSD, argue with PIC that incomplete information was provided about my medical condition and seek further assessment. She got PTSD recognized and significantly improved my claim.
A new medical assessment cost me $2970.00. I had to take a new assessment with properly supplied information. It provided accurate assessment aligned with the symptoms and contributed in getting proper assessment by PIC medical assessor.
Additional treatment expenses $5,000. Dealing with Law Partners coupled with combined actions of Ceballos, QBE solicitor, was a retraumatizing experience and reverted all mental health treatment gains to the level I was after the injury. Ceballos would not be able to make even a tiny portion of that impact if not for Law Partners. It took me 3 years to recover from retraumatization caused by Law Partners. Not having any income I am limited in my treatment options, but even just counting Medicare and small expenses I paid myself that would easily be $5,000. Potentially this could be covered by a compensation claim, but it was not. It also would not be covered if I accepted Law Partners' offer.

Additional work and loss of potential income during the time that already passed

Additional work done by me and my wife preparing information again for my claim and checking what was missed by Law Partners. The information collected by Law Partners did not help in any way to get compensation. They did not supply the file to the next solicitor on time. Even when they did, I found out that it had very little information. Law Partners basically only forwarded information between me, QBE and PIC. However, even this they did by withholding some very important information and process would have been easier without their involvement. I already paid for additional work: $30,000 to Moya de Luca-Leonard and have another bill from solicitor Peter Livers of $31,701.07. I hope that I will be able to reduce it.
Loss of productivity. It has been 6 years since I have engaged Law Partners. I have not been able to restore any capacity to earn money. I do not expect it to happen any time soon. While negative impact comes not only from Law Partners, but if they did their job some other problems would not happen. Even if I took a job with much lower level skill required that I had before the injury (it is safe to assume that without this negative impact I would have recovered at least to that level) I would earn $125,000.00 per year. Even if recovery from the original injury kept my capacity to work lower I still was expecting some recovery and for 4 years it is $500,000. This is not including super. I do not know how the share of responsibility is calculated, but I would not have these losses if Law Partners did their job.

Additional legal work

There is a lot of work done and way more ahead in attempting to fix the injustice done by Law Partners that is not included in the work done by Leonard ar Livers. It is difficult to estimate how much one would charge for this kind of work and how much work it will require, but for at least parts of it done so far I had estimates of $50,000.00.

Future losses

I do not include future loss because it is hard to estimate. Also past expenses and potential losses of income already goes way beyond the limitation of OLSC that I am aware of.

Non-economic loss

The examples of compensation for pain and suffering that I know of is from road traffic injury. They were unfairly low. However, even these range from $100,000.00 to $625,000.00. Given my very limited knowledge of how it is calculated and the fact that the primary cause of trauma is road traffic injury and this is only a retraumatizing event I would estimate compensation value of $100,000 for Law Partners part.

My personal opinion is that it should be about $300,000.00, but it does not follow the advice I got about compensation for non-economic loss that I have received from lawyers.