PORTER DODSON LLP

I would not recommend this solicitors at all.
Very slow and like to price for
general communication, like me phoning secretary and making an appointment, which already cost me to receive an email asking me to make an appointment, then another cost to change that appointment as he was already booked.
even have to pay for paperwork to be printed at extortionate price.

I totally agree with the review before me l employed this firm to defend a case for me and ended up with a bill of £14,542 and they never defended my case to the extent I had to employ another team of solicitor's who won my case in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost I had to sack Porter Dobson LLC at all costs avoid this firm

A rather belated review but one which needs to be posted. We engaged with Porter Dodson back along for an employment tribunal. It all seeded quite straight forward, estimated fees reasonable, potential for pay out good and chances of succeeding high. Or so we thought. Then reality. Solicitor engaged goes sick and we have to pay for new solicitor to get up to speed.. Fair? I’ll let you decide.

The total fees ended up being 4 times the estimate given and the explanation offered by Porter Dodson amounted to “we weren’t expecting the other party to put up a fight”. Really… you’re solicitors, this is what you do, day in, day out.
The case to court whereby the barrister strongly advised against going into battle, saying the case was not strong enough. This was the first time we had ever been told this. The outcome eventually was an out of court settlement which covered Porter Dodson’s fees and left nothing over. What a waste of a year and an incredible amount of energy. The final insult was when Porter Dodson tried to invoice for the barrister for 4 days, despite him telling us when we walked out of court that he would only be submitting costs for a day.

So the conclusion… this was all about Porter Dodson making money. Not anything more. Their advice was poor, their conduct was unethical and the outcome was one which only favoured them.

Had AI been around at the time, I could without a doubt have done a better job myself. My advice therefore would be to think very long and hard before engagement with a solicitor on such a matter and if possible, pin your them down to costs at the start because they will happily gobble up your money for as long as you’ll let them, it’s what’s they’re very, very skilful at doing.

We went to porter and dodson as we're thought they would be a good solicitor for buying a house with. We wanted the taunton branch and we were transfered to yeovil branch. We then had delays though lost paper work, things being posted back to them through the taunton branch. The biggest issues that we had was when the final bill came though it was a lot lot more then was the estimated costs were. We understand there was a little bit more work involved but not £2000 worth extra. We were told this was correct so to stop further delays we paid the extra. About a week later we had a call to say they had calculated it wrong and charged us £2000 to much. This could have cost us our house and if we had not questioned the cost would it have even been picked up on. I can understand a simple miss calculation but £2000 is a lot.
Even though I would give 5 stars to the secretary called Carol she was wonderful , ever so helpful and helped when we did not understand some of the paper work. Shame about the money issues because you put your trust in the legals to do right by you not to try to leave you out of pocket.

We have just completed our sale and purchase. Zara Davies was our solicitor and we received a first class, excellent, professional service. Zara was very approachable, kind and sympathetic as we are caring for my 96 year terminally ill father so ensuring a smooth transaction was so important and imperative. We would like to send our sincere gratitude and thanks to Zara and Verity for making it happen for us. We shall certainly be recommending her to family and friends. Thank you Zara.