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 Ken 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.

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.

Law Partners bill

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.

Financial loss

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 first place: get a report from 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. I had to take new medical assessment with properly supplied information. It cost me $2970.00. It provided accurate assessment aligned with the symptoms and contributed in getting proper assessment by PIC medical assessor.
3. 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. Ceballow would not been able to make even a tiny portion of that impact of not for Law Partners. It took me 3 years to recover from retraumatisation caused by Law Partners.

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.

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.

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