How to find a good solicitor

I wrote a little bit about what problems some lawyers cause and why, in my experience, it is often better to have no solicitor that the one that I was able to find. It is absurd situation that should not be possible in democracy with free market as specialist should be able to do task more efficiently.

I know how to fix the problem (or at least what I can do), but it will require a lot of resources (that I do not have). Let look at the solution and what is possible to do, while I am working on it. There is a lot of experience and knowledge that I gained since then. I wish someone told me about it earlier.

Specialization

Depending on what services you want the way to look for a solicitor will differ. Because of my experience and the significance of impact I will mostly focus on few areas of law (areas are grouped by the criteria provided by La Society of NSW).

1. Personal Injury Law - Motor Vehicle Injuries - Plaintiff
2. Litigation - Professional Negligence - Legal
3. Miscellaneous - Solicitors Costs Disputes

However, this does not mean that this guide is not useful in finding lawyer in other area of law. Just main data is about the ones mentioned above.

Ways to look for solicitor

This is conclusion that I come after 9 years dealing with personal injury claim and misconduct of my lawyers. I contacted probably about 50 law firms and organizations. So, this is a list of my preferred methods to find and compare solicitors.

1. Data driven
2. Recommendations
3. Local area
4. Law Society database
5. Internet search

Data driven

There were few parameters that can be sequential for every case and can be easily compared. Yes, every case is different, but without reliable data you are guided by false promises and that proved to be a very bad way to judge how well solicitor will represent you.

Reliable data

There were some criteria that is easy to calculate, but gives very good indication of how good solicitor is. For personal injury compensation claims there were two main factors the compensation you got and the fees solicitor charge. There were many other criteria, but these were a bit more difficult to express in numbers. For compensation claim the key factor is the compensation you get. However, in practice I found that the huge factor is exaggerated legal fees that can make your compensation useless. This is a data of 3 solicitor who represented me.

Compensation and fees proportions

Firm	Best offer	Billed fees	Other expenses	Estimated impact on claim	Percentage
Law Partners personal injury firm	$250,000	$173,369.01	$4,958.21 medical disbursements, $11,000 Centrelink, $11,000 Medicare	$49672.78
17:00-21:00 Kogarah	17:00-21:00 Kogarah			17:00-21:00 Kogarah	17:00-21:00 Kogarah	17:00-21:00 Kogarah
			18:00-21:00 Coogee	17:30-21:00 Summer Hill; 18:00-21:00 Coogee	17:30-21:00 Summer Hill

Law Society database

You can get list of solicitors in your area and practicing particular law by using law society solicitor referral service. They do not provide any ranking.

Ways to check solicitor

1. Reviews
2. Past and present cases

Reviews

Most of solicitors have some sort of web site but does not provide any reliable information about the quality of work or potential problems. Same can be said about recommendations on sites like google maps.

Google maps

After looking at many different reviews about solicitor firms I can tell that unfortunately many of these reviews look fake. There is no way to tell for sure, but two things I would pay attention too:

1. How real reviewers profile looks like: does it have name, phone, how many reviews.
2. How detail is review. I think that when people write genuine review, they like to tell their story. While it is hard to invent many stories while writing fake reviews, but possible.

I have been looking for reviews on Google Maps way before I got injured. So, I checked reviews about some specialist I went to see. I was planning to write my own reviews about my own experience. However, some things went terribly wrong, and these thoughts get blocked. I have written first review on February 2024, almost 9 years after I thought about it. And this happened only because I accidentally stumbled upon them when looking for information somewhere else. It took me another 3 months to remember that I should write about all people and organisations with whom I had to deal after road traffic injury and very long recovery path that I am still on. I will start with bad ones as I feel it is important to warn other people about the danger.

QBE

Empire of evil. I cannot come up with a better name. It is the best way to describe my experience with QBE.

I learned that having a claim with QBE was a re-traumatizing experience. It took more than 8 years. QBE has dragged time and disregarded the law in ways I did not expect. Some examples:

• I felt pressured to withdraw my claim starting from the first call from QBE after I notified them about the road collision.
• They are required by law to respond about liability (and there was no question about it) in 3 months, but they took 3 years to respond. QBE never paid for any treatment.
• They never paid for any treatment. Instead, I was sent to different specialists with an empty promise that they will pay after assessment. I also never got their psychologist assessment report, but

instead, later I was sent to another one.

• The statements they provided (including their lawyers) break basic laws of physics: I would need a teleportation device and time travel for it to be true, or other statements just pure fiction.

It scares me to think that there were people at QBE who take these actions intentionally.

I am strongly convinced that if you were considering taking insurance from QBE it would be much better for you to throw your money away. This way when you are vulnerable and need help you will not need to defend yourself against QBE attacks.

For some time, I thought, how is this possible? How could a business exist that treats people this way?

They knew that road traffic injury caused me mental health problems (PTSD) as they had all medical reports and assessment. It seems this is why they pushed so absurdly hard seeking to break me. At the end it took a lot of my time, a huge toll on my mental and physical health to the point where I was no longer able to continue and had to accept absurdly low compensation.

I believe my case is not exceptional in any way, and that abuse is the way they conduct their business. I read a bit about QBE. It seems they actually do the same nasty things to other people too. It is just an empire of evil in the true sense of its name. I found on the Internet the court cases where QBE denied treatment because people had COVID.

PTSD makes it very difficult to talk about it. I am left to live with a feeling of injustice. After several months I realised there is something I can do. At least I can write a review about it.

BTW if you think that you hire lawyers to shield you from all these problems you may find yourself in even more trouble, but that is another story.

Left Outside of my review

If there is one, then it is QBE. If you image how evil, they can be they will surprise you by passing your all expectations. They will manage to be evil in the way you have not expected. In my experience they brake law to absurd level just to harm you and break your spirit to make you withdraw your claim. I understand that there were way more horrible things in this world. However, I am thinking about my experience how they conduct business as a company.

I found it very shocking how QBE operates. I expected that they will find a way to minimize compensation. However, the way they do it makes me thing that they were breaking the law. I am in no way an expert. I need to write examples, and someone maybe can correct me. Just it takes time, and I am so out of energy, but I will come bac to this.

Past and present cases

You can have a look at the court cases they have been involved in and the results they got. If your solicitor claims to have more than 10 years of experience, but have not been in court even single time, I found it as a clear indication that he is blushing your and will push for a settlement at any cost. Determinations from court cases are public.

• Personal Injury Commission provides information where you can find their decisions.
• New South Wales Caselaw - decisions for all courts and Tribunals
• Australasian Legal Information Institute
• Supreme Court of New South Wales Court of Appeal
• Check list of upcoming court cases in online court registry. Maybe you can see the solicitor in action.