Law Partners personal injury firm

I been a client of Law Partners personal injury firm from 2018-04 till 2020-06. After the injury itself this is the second thing, I wish that would not happen in my life. For me dealing with Law Partners was truly re-traumatizing experience. It started path of the misery that I still cannot get out of.

I was represented by solicitor Gillian Potts and barrister Kenneth Pryde, who technically is not a part a part of Law Partners, but according to himself works with them a lot.

The list of problems is very long. I have 2 complaints against them with Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner.

For short story of my injury claim check: Alfonsas Stonis personal injury claim - short story.

Short story

I was injured in 2015. QBE insurance was not doing anything they were required by law (not even paying for treatment they agreed to pay). I contacted one lawyer whom I knew to represent me at the start of 2018. However, after a few months he informed me that he has not done this type of work for too long and is too out of date. He forwarded my case to Law Partners believing that they will represent me better.

At the start I was surprised how Law Partners dealt with medical evidence. However, they assured me that they are very skilled and experienced in this field and this is the best way for me to deal with it. In time I started getting frustrated with the way they managed my claim: lack of information, pointless meetings, refusal to collect important medical evidence (like a report from a treating psychologist).

The problem was that after the injury I have PTSD. In order for Law Partners to represent me I had to provide full information to them about how difficult it is for me to function, my cognitive constraints and inability to cope with stress. It made it very easy for them to manipulate me.

They promised low costs and a 30% cap on their fees. However, the contract has few items that let them add additional fees and discard the 30% cap completely. They needlessly invited a barrister to all meetings without my agreement, who is not covered by the 30% cap. They take a lot of unnecessary actions to inflate their fees. They misrepresent your claim to make it weaker (for example the independent medical assessor did not get full information and as a result his assessment did not reach the 10% whole permanent impairment WPI threshold). They avoided mentioning that I have PTSD when it is my main problem. Then when they decided that their fees are high enough they pushed me to settle for very low compensation. When I asked for an independent assessment they sent me for psychological assessment by QBE provided psychologist Moodley. Her report was fraudulent and in favor of the insurer. I sent a list of evidence to Law Partners, showing absurdly incorrect statements in that report. Instead of disputing the report Law Partners pressured me that no-one is going to believe me. I still insisted on an independent assessment. Then they demanded to sign an agreement revoking the 30% cap and agreeing to even further exaggerate costs.

In 2020 I looked for a second opinion and was recommended to change solicitors, and I did so.

The betrayal by Law Partners was so traumatising that it erased all gains I had from treatment for my PTSD. I lost trust in lawyers and the legal system. I went to them 6 years ago. My claim could have been finished in a few months, maximum one year. However, I am still dealing with the consequences. It has been 6 years of suffering. I lost 6 years of my life and there is no way to get it back. All because of greedy lawyers.

I do suspect that they had a secret deal with the QBE solicitor. However, I think it is very difficult to prove. I still need to find a way to have it properly investigated.

Professional misconduct

I hired Law Partners to represent me in my claim against QBE. However, I ended up spending more energy and time fighting against Law Partners rather than QBE itself. They stand as a protector of QBE. You hire them to help you instead they ended up helping organizations you have claim against.

Just by writing this intro I remember that there is a lot of information I already collected about their misconduct. I just need to upload some of it here. Dumping everything here would be too much, and I doubt most of the readers would be interested, so I will try to provide summaries.

There were many things that Law Partners did wrong for my claim. Because of this I also needed to reach out to different organization and take different pathways in attempt to manage the harm caused by Law Partners.

I contacted so far:

1. Personal Injury Commission (PIC) and other personal injury lawyers tin attempt to fix my claim. I was able to improve my claim, but they do nothing against misconduct by lawyers.
2. Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner. - wrote a complaint about their conduct including exaggerated fees. They deal with lawyers' misconduct. However, there are some limitations about legal fees. I am still waiting for their decision.

I am preparing applications for these organizations:

1. Supreme court cost assessment (SCCA) - there were no limitations on legal fees and if OLSC will not be able to deal with their fees, then SCCA will be able. I have prepared Law Partners bill analysis. If they find that Law Partners fees were exaggerated and I have no doubt about it, they will referee to OLSC. Exaggeration of legal fees is considered serious professional misconduct with heavy penalties.
2. Court - this option was recommended as best one by lawyers who specialize in other lawyers' misconduct. However, there is an interesting hierarchy of actions you can take. So, previously mentioned actions does not stop from taking this one. However, if I start court proceedings then I can no longer ask for help from OLSC or SCCA.

Cost agreement

I signed cost agreement with Law Partners on 2018-04-10. I have only paper version of it, so I tried to convert it to text from scanned document, but the result is not good: Law Partners cost agreement. I will edit when I have a chance, but because I need to use it often while preparing application for supreme court cost assessment, I finally decided to add it too.

Problems with cost agreement

1. Gillian Potts rushed me to sign the contract say, that she already sent some documents in my name and there is also some urgent tasks to be done. Much latter I learned it not to be true as they did not intent to go to court that had 3 years deadline. The application to Motor Accidents Authority (Personal Injury Commission now) had no time deadline.
2. Because of my cognitive constraints mainly caused by PTSD I had no chance to do research on my own and relied on information provided by Potts.
3. Potts introduced this cost agreement as standard contract and did not mention that there were any regulations about their fees. She did not inform me that I am contracting out of regulated fees.
4. Potts estimated for the whole case of $55,000 ($70,000 including all costs at the court). This was in case the case goes to court and she told me that it should be half of it if case is finalized after assessment and even half less if it is settled earlier.
5. Many items, especially with Potts confirmation that these were standard fees, like medical assessment, I thought to include medical fees. I had no way to know what it will include other than just to rely on her estimate.
6. Potts promised 30% cap on legal fees. She told me that it is just in case if something goes very wrong and I receive very small compensation, then their fees will be reduced accordingly.

Law Partners bill

Misconduct

1. There was very little work done. Only 2 very badly prepared submissions for medical assessment.
2. They omitted information that I have PTSD as a consequence of the injury. This is the base of my claim.
3. No work done to actually prepare my case for assessment.
4. Dragging time with pointless tasks like meetings with barrister, where the only thing he did was to tell lame jokes.
5. No update on change in estimate of fees, till the very late, when they started pushing me to accept grossly exaggerated fees.
6. Demand to accept uncapped starting legal fees of $178,327 with promise to significantly increase it in order to go to independent assessment. They never intended to have my case properly completed.

Bill items

1. Charge for all phone calls and emails twice: as part of other items and additionally individually just calls or correspondence, even if by the contract they were already covered by other items and should not be charged additionally (items: 1, 2, 3, 5).
2. Charge for the tasks they have not performed, but simply asked the client to provide final information (item 4).
3. I had a look at 34 general communication items: 7 have no correspondence, 6 were just notifications of appointments, for notification of one appointment with Dr Khan they charge 4 times. None of them should have been charged based on the contract.
4. They made 2 mathematical errors and charge extra $3,210.01.

Analysis of Law Partners itemised bill. Analysing bill according to supreme court cost assessment requirements is a good way to look at itemised bill as you may need to go there if negotiations fail. It will also give better understanding where you are. Media Wiki is not the best tool for this as you need to calculate sums and I do not know how to do it using Media Wiki, so I am using spread sheets instead.

Impact of Law Partners misconduct

Currently I have Law Partners bill for $176,327.71. Analysis of it shows that it is grossly exaggerated. However, when I look at their impact I am much better of if I never engaged them. So, what ever I will be paying them it is a money they have not deserve to receive.

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. Whie it is possible to find lawyer who would get result where I would end up with less it is safe to say that vast majority of lawyers would get a better result. Any lawyer acting withing limits of law and profession standards would get a better result.

After engaging other lawyers I managed to fix some problems caused to my claim by Law Partners. 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 where pushing me to settle lower by at least $200,000.00.

Financial loss

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

Paid expenses

1. Moya de Luca-Leonard fees $30,000. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 been covered if I accepted Law Partners offer.

Additional work and loss of potential income

1. 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 on time and even when they did, I find out that it had very little information. They 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. This additional work was more than the solicitor did and can be estimated at the same price as next solicitors work at $30,000.00.
2. Loss of productivity . Even if taken 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 earned $125,000.00 per year. For 3 years it is $375,000. After adding supper and removing taxes and all possible reductions net loss is still more than $200,000.00.

Additional legal work

There is a lot work done and way more ahead in attempt to fix the injustice done by Law Partners.

Review on Google Maps

I was looking for solutions what to do with Law Partners fees. I did not find solution for fees, but I found interesting story that has surprising amount of similarities to mine. I would like to share it Google Maps review by g b. Review is by user with initial g b. He has local guide ranking on google maps and the review seems genuine. It is about Parramatta office, but in my view it still applies to Sydney office too. I place a copy of this review here.

More about reviews you can read here.

My review

I left review about my experience too; you can find it on Google Maps. below is a copy of my review and replies.

Alfonsas Stonis about start of January 2024

I been a client of Law Partners personal injury firm from 2018-04 till 2020-06. After the injury itself this is the second thing, I wish that would not happen in my life. For me dealing with Law Partners was truly retraumatizing experience. It started path of the misery that I still cannot get out of. I felt completely misrepresented and after little work done, I was hit with legal fees over $170,000.

Every day I wish I would never hire them.

Response from the owner

Hi Alfonsas,

We understand just how difficult experiencing an injury can be. That’s why we strive to support our clients throughout the claims process to help them get all the compensation that they are entitled to.

As you know, our team have been working hard to get you an outcome to your claim that you are satisfied with. To protect your privacy, we will not go into any further details of your case.

If you’d like to discuss the details of your case further, please reach out to me on 9264 4474.

Shane Butcher,

Principal.

Google Maps does not have function to respond

1. Dealing with Law Partners was retraumatizing experience in addition to original injury
2. As far as I know, your team did very little and made sure I get unsatisfactory outcome
3. OK, I will share details of my experience dealing with Law Partners, so others can learn from it: https://roadtrafficinjury.net/index.php/Law_Partners_personal_injury_firm