DivorceScotland.Scot is owned and operated by Rooney Family Law (RFL)
RFL is a relatively new law firm having traded for 3 years. It was started by Brian Rooney who had previously worked as a Family Lawyer in a number of different law firms.
From his experiences he decided that, from the outset, the new firm would do three things;
- It would provide the client with a far more efficient service.
- It would use technology to help with this.
- It would find a fairer way to charge fees.
It is the third point which we will concentrate on.
Almost universally Family Lawyers charge on the basis of time spent. The time is charged at an hourly rate. Every bit of time spent on a case is charged for no matter how short.
Solicitors generally charge out by dividing the hour into units. Typically ten units each of 6 minutes units make up an hour. (some firms use units of 10 or even 15 minutes)
What this means is that even if the work carried out only takes 2 minutes to do it will still be charged as 1 unit (namely six minutes). So the lawyer does 2 minutes work, (eg reading an email) but charges for 6 minutes. Over the course of a case this might happen dozens of times and the difference mounts up with the client being adversely affected.
Brian decided he would offer his clients two fairer ways of charging fees;
- The firm would not charge time by the unit. It would charge by the exact amount of minutes spent by the lawyer on the case.
- For more straightforward types of work the firm would charge a ‘fixed fee’. This fee would not be based on time spent. It would be based on a fair fee for the work that was required.
Other family law firms do offer ‘fixed fee’ services, particularly for undefended divorces.
The fixed fees offered tend to be considerably higher than those charged by DivorceScotland.Scot as they are worked out on the basis of how long a qualified solicitor would spend on the case.
By using technology and accredited family Law paralegals, supervised by qualified solicitors DivorceScotland.Scot is able to offer fixed fees for undefended divorces that are substantially cheaper than the fees charged by competitor firms.
There are, of course, divorce cases that are not straightforward and where fixed fees would not work. For those cases Rooney Family Law are the only firm in Scotland who charge by the minute and not by the unit.
