STEPHENSONS SOLICITORS LLP

Strategic awards do not match client care for vulnerable individuals

Stephensons Solicitors LLP heavily promotes its corporate accolades, but my experience as a vulnerable Legal Aid client managing multiple long standing chronic conditions,physical disabilities and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) reveals a starkly different reality.

While acting as my solicitors of record for two active civil rights court claims, the firm unexpectedly closed my files at the eleventh hour during an active internal grievance dispute. For my first case, they issued a formal file closure letter giving me less than 24 hours’ notice to format and post complex court forms before a critical service deadline, completely jeopardising my access to justice.

Furthermore, in a formal internal complaint response signed by a partner, the firm explicitly admitted in writing that their handling solicitor entirely omitted to evaluate or document my intersectional claims regarding race, religion, and nationality in my formal merits assessment. For my secondary linked claim, the solicitor explicitly admitted in writing that she closed the file without ever conducting the full merits assessment the firm was publicly funded to perform. They attempted to withhold my evidence packs via temporary digital links, only releasing my full physical files late after external regulatory escalation.

RESPONSE TO THE FIRM'S SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM: Do not reply with a generic automated message asking me to log a complaint with your customer care team. I have already fully exhausted your internal procedures. I raised a formal grievance in April 2026, and your Discrimination Department Head issued a Final Response in May 2026 explicitly refusing to uphold my complaint.

Because your internal process failed to provide a remedy, this matter has been escalated. A formal complaint is now actively open with the Legal Ombudsman, and a misconduct report has been officially logged with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for severe client detriment. Corporate accolades cannot mask a documented paper trail of eleventh hour client abandonment.

Stephensons have made the process of buying our first home really easy. Dawn, Alison and Rebecca have been very supportive throughout and have been very quick to reply to our questions and get deal with all matters. We would certainly use them again.

Stephensons handled my case brilliantly, providing me support all the way through, from start to finish. Martin Haisley was brilliant with the preparation and he also appointed me a representative for my hearing and James Meredith and he was absolutely amazing with the way he represented me and got me a brilliant out come. I wouldn’t have gotten the outcome that I did without Stephensons help!

Absolutely shambolic from start to finish. No care taken over our case (conveyancing) every time we rang to get an update they made us feel like we were being unreasonable and wasting their time. The receptionist was often rude and our solicitor didn't seem to know what she was doing. They would frequently ignore our emails only to email back a few days later with a set of questions/demands for information and made no reference to the unanswered questions that we asked. When challenged on this (happening continuously) we did not receive an apology just the excuse that 'they are very busy' really not good enough when we are paying them a large amount of money to work for us. I can understand being busy but I don't think any other industry would accept being to busy to answer your clients/customers questions. We were not emailing them every day or difficult questions that it would take a moment to answer (if they knew their jobs as they should).
They would frequently lie to us about what the estate agent had said, this was strange as we were also in contact with the estate agents, at first we considered it may have been accidental or simply a mistake, however at one point we were cc'd into an email so we could see what the estate agent had said and could see that they intentionally lied to us. When this was bought up via email (as they were never available by phone) they ignored the email.
They also tried to include stamp duty for us to pay towards the end of the sale which we had to point out first time buyers don't pay, either they were being slap dash and overlooked this or being inept and forgot this either way absolutely terrible service and a terible experience.
I have honestly never received service this bad in my life anywhere. I am completely baffled as to how they are still in business and cannot stress enough how much I recommend using anyone else. I have left it over 3 months to write this review to give myself time to cool off and look at it calmly and see if I still felt as strongly as I do. My only regret is some people may have engaged them in the last few months without the benefit of this advice.
Do not use this company the three people we dealt with during out 7 month saga were all completely useless.

Professional, clear, fast, reasonably priced. I used Stephensons as my solicitors when I sold my flat in Manchester. I was impressed with their service from start to finish. This was the first time I had sold a property, and the process was made very clear to me. They kept me up to date with the progress of the sale, including dealing with the additional factor of dealing with the management company running my flat. The sale of the property was as swift and easy as it could have possibly been. Stephensons were always very professional and informative, and their rates were competitive too. I have no hesitation in recommending them.