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We hope this site is a useful resource for people who wish to engage the services of a member of the legal profession. If you cannot find your solicitor listed here, please contribute to the site by adding the name and address yourself.

Nov 2007: The corrupt solicitors that have been making headlines this past month, Michael Lynn, Thomas Byrne and Ciaran Callan had all been rated Avoid here for over a year before the current scandal. Get the full story here.

A rating should be based on your own experience, or that of your company.

There are four possible ratings:
: Poor
: Average
: Good

Here are some guidelines to help you decide if an AVOID rating is justified:

* Did your solicitor wrongfully hold onto your files or papers?
* Did your solicitor wrongfully misappropriate money or property belonging to you?
* Is your solicitor untruthful and guilty of dishonest and dishonourable conduct?
* Do you believe that your solicitor does not carry on his/her practice in a professional and competent manner?
* Has your solicitor altered, distorted or suppressed legal documents?
* Did your solicitor commit or attempt to commit fraud or probate a fraudulent Will?
* Did your solicitor commit or attempt to commit an act which would attract a prison sentence if perpetrated by a lay person?

These questions are all based on the personal experience of members of the Victims of the Legal Profession Society.

Please add a brief comment to your rating by way of explanation. All comments are moderated, and any profanity, death threats or unsolicited advertising will be removed. This means that anything you submit will not appear immediately. It must be passed by our moderators first - this may take up to 48 hours. If you have a longer story that you would like to make public, consider being published in the Case Histories on the VLPS site CrookedLawyers.com


We have been asked if legal people other than solicitors, such as barristers, arbitrators, etc. could also be rated on this site. This can indeed be done, as long as the actual profession of the person you are rating is mentioned in the name or address box.

STATEMENT BY MANAGEMENT:

Some comments as regards those "experts" (mostly journalists and lawyers) who called for RYS to require people to identify themselves before being allowed to post on the site: RYS knows from its own extensive legal experience and from the experiences of the VLPS in Ireland that a majority of people with clearly legitimate grievances are nevertheless *scared to death* (and not always without reason) of the perceived power of their legal advisers to harm them. It is equally obvious that in practice many Irish solicitors are more than happy to play on these fears when it suits them. Added to the call for identification was the very naive idea of moderating sometimes hundreds of strongly felt comments each day to a libel-proof standard. The only possible outcome of following all this presumably well-meant advice would be a self-congratulatory talking shop for Irish solicitors of no conceivable use to the public, their clients. It is quite clear that a site like RYS needs teeth to be effective and this will always be our fundamental guiding principle. On the other hand, it should also be kept in mind that everybody is free to post a comment on the site or in the RYS Forum to refute whatever comment about themselves is objected to. Any *well-founded* objections by solicitors to comments on the site will be seriously considered. They can contact us by email.

The consumer of legal services in Ireland has finally been empowered and is likely to become more and more demanding in the future. Third rate service for first rate prices will no longer be tolerated! As to the controversial subject of postings regarding the private lives of solicitors, management agrees that in many cases such postings are irrelevant to the professional competence of a legal practitioner. However, as most lawyers rightly or wrongly still consider themselves pillars of society and as such above criticism, the very least they can do for their clients, who are after all financing their very comfortable lifestyles, is to let their private lives reflect this presumed high standard. Apart from that, some aspects of private lifestyle can very well be of great influence on professional competence. A simple example would be an alcoholic, or drug user, who would on the basis of that fact alone be unacceptable as a legal adviser to most people; even a solicitor's appearance may well be relevant in some cases, where a client would try to project a certain image. Many similar scenarios are possible, so that remarks of a personal nature will not be rejected by RYS automatically, although they should be kept to a minimum. In the final analysis however, every poster should simply keep in mind that they are solely responsible for their own postings and act accordingly.

-The RYS Team