Is my solicior being fair?

Hi,
I am in the process of negotiating a financial settlement with my STBX. My current solicitor has gone on maternity leave, and the head of her dept. has taken over my file. Firstly she has increased my fees, saying that this would have been the new fees charged by my previous solicitor if she had stayed in her job and secondly, she has starting charging me for letters that have not been requested by me. These are letters that say, "weve not heard from you in a while, can we help" and "here is your yearly summary of charges against our estimate" and even charging me for sending me my bill, with one just one extra sentence at the bottom saying that "following our phonecall, I look forward to hearing from you". She describes this as work!!! Whereas I see it as marketing! Because my STBX is taking ages to produce his voluntary disclosure, my intructions to my solicitor were, don''t call me, ill call you! And yet she is charging me for sending me a letter I didn''t ask for! I have complained, but wonder if this is good practice for a solicitor. It couldn''t come at a worse time either!
thanks in advance

There is a fine line between keeping a client up to date and ''costs building'' where a cost is attached to every action on the file no matter how small.

Personally I would not charge for a letter sending a bill or the "we''ve not heard from you in a while, can we help?" letter. However, a letter saying "we have had no response from the other side for 2 months, please contact me to update you instructions" would be chargeable.

As for increasing the hourly rate, you will have to check the terms and conditions and your client care letter to see what the policy is regarding increases to the rates. There is usually some provision and it will normally specify the time of year when the rate is reviewed.

Charles

Thanks Charles, that''s a great help.