The letter sent to Lloyds customers under a law firm's name

[AAD News Feed]

The letter sent to Lloyds customers under a law firm's name

This is a duplicate of the Blog Entry made on 17th July 2014 06:48.

Lloyds Banking Group has sent Andrew Tyrie an example of the letters it sent customers who owed the bank money under the name of a defunct law...

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[ATW]

Re: The letter sent to Lloyds customers under a law firm's name

Anyone dealing with SCM should challenge their entitlement to claim costs. Ask them under what provision they are claiming costs as they are not a law firm. I do not think that they are entitled to costs but this is a specialised area so i think we should ask them to show why they should get paid and see what (if anything) they come up with. If they are in house lawyers then there is no cost to Lloyds in instructing them because they are already employed by them.

Im sure if i wrote to Lloyds with my SRA number to say we are AAD Solicitors and asked them for costs they would tell me where to get off so i cant see why the same should not apply to them. If they can claim costs then maybe we should write under a ficticious name of a law firm that does not exist and put the costs that we are not entitled to into a Christmas party fund.

[PlanB]

Re: The letter sent to Lloyds customers under a law firm's name

Anyone dealing with SCM should challenge their entitlement to claim costs. Ask them under what provision they are claiming costs as they are not a law firm. I do not think that they are entitled to costs but this is a specialised area so i think we should ask them to show why they should get paid and see what (if anything) they come up with. If they are in house lawyers then there is no cost to Lloyds in instructing them because they are already employed by them..

That's an interesting point.

I suppose they could argue their costs aren't legal fees as such, they're administration charges to recover sums owed by the debtor as per the account's Ts & Cs (that's usually in the Ts & Cs) just like over limit fees, returned DDS etc.

Presumably these would be a lot less than a solicitor's costs and should only reflect the actual work effort carried out. Template letters created by a database do not cost £200 + VAT per hour. Even the bank's human beings (and I use that term loosely) involved would normally be ligation clerks not qualified lawyers until they get to court.

My solution would be to limit in-house legal costs to the same rate as LIP costs - £18 per hour max