Many solicitors are quite defensive about professional negligence claims, particularly against other solicitors. Questions often arise like what work falls below the standrd required of a reasonably competent solicitor. The answers to those questions (and more!) are covered in the excellent new edition of Solicitors' Negligence and Liability.

Written by two experienced barristers, the book covers the whole scheme of solicitor negligence. Impressively, the text first considers the essential principles. It later considers specific issues of negligence like conveyancing. This is an excellent approach because it allows the reader to understand the basic principles but then consider the finer points of negligence in a particular field.

Solicitors' Negligence and Liability is superbly written and provides both a clear and authoritative account of this area of law. The principles are well explained and include (where appropriate) detailed footnotes allowing the reader to undertake further research. The authors also wonderfully combine commentary with extracts from the key cases. This allows teh reader to understand the principles in context. Solicitors' Negligence and Liability also goes beyond simple professional negligence claims by considering issues like conflicts of interest and duties when giving non-legal advice.

For anyone practising in this area of law, they should seriously consider buying this book. It provides an extremely accessible and clear account of the law, the principles and their application meaning it is an excellent reference point for these claims. It is also extremely well written and its price means it provides excellent value for money.

Student Law Journal, 12th May 2008

Getting on for nine years have passed since the publication of the first edition of this book by these two well-known and highly-regarded professional liability specialists. That lapse of time has seen a change of publisher and an adjustment to the title of the book. It is also a period in which the authors argue “the law relating to claims against solicitors has developed prolifically.” That, they say, accounts for the more than doubling of the length of their work to 774 pages of text and appendices. The book follows what can be described as a standard layout: some chapters on general principles of tort, contract and equity so far as apply in a professional liability context—to which new sections on causation, authority, vicarious liability, undertakings and confidentiality are welcome additions—followed by chapters on the commonest types of specific claims against solicitors, followed finally by two chapters on matters relating to procedure. Of these two, it is perhaps odd that applications for wasted costs are included at this juncture rather than earlier: surely the law relating to the wasted costs jurisdiction is substantive, not merely procedural.

One cannot help wondering whether it is the law that has “developed” prolifically since the first edition of this book, or merely that there has been a prolific—some might say excessive—increase of reported (and unreported) case law. This reviewer rather suspects the latter, in truth. What are the really big solicitors’ liability cases of the last decade or so? Etridge, Hall v Simons (for solicitor advocates), Cave, Sephton, Dubal together with important guidance from Twinsectra, Chester v Afshar, Gregg v Scott and the quartet of cases on contribution decided by the House of Lords in 2002? Not so prolific, then. So it is the volume of decided cases that has proliferated, and it is that volume which this book taps. The thoroughness with which the authors, assisted by contributions from Thomas Grant and Dr Paul Mitchell, have set about exploring nearly every facet of this proliferation is the great achievement of this book. No matter that there is one glaring omission: nothing on regulation of the solicitors’ profession and on disciplinary processes. No matter that the authors could in Ch. 11 (wills, estates and trusts) have grappled more critically with Daniels v Thompson and have examined more sceptically the necessity for over-used resort to the beneficiary principle in the light of Otter v Church Adams Tatham. No matter that Ch. 10 (lenders’ claims) reads as if written from the perspective of a defendant solicitor’s professional indemnity insurer. No matter that in Ch. 5 (solicitors’ undertakings) greater attention might have been given to the question of loss arising from breach of an undertaking: that Fox v Bannister King & Rigbeys, correctly understood, means that there has to have been a pre-undertaking existing loss which persisted after non-performance of the undertaking for an enforcement order properly to be made. These are all minor bees in this reviewer’s bonnet. The reader can, nevertheless, be confident that the authors have provided as authoritative and comprehensive a treatment of the present state of the law relating to solicitors as is currently available in the marketplace. At £95, this book is a steal. And for those reasons this reviewer will neither lightly cast his Flenley & Leech aside, nor hurl it with great force, but will keep it firmly by his side at all times.

Professional Negligence Law Review, Issue 2 June 2008

Whilst a legal purist might argue that the fundamental principles underlying the tort of negligence are the same whether or not a professional is involved, a practitioner will be all too aware that the problems which typically arise in professional negligence cases are different from those in other areas of negligence. As Lord Millett noted in the foreword to the first edition of this textbook, professional negligence should be considered a discrete branch of the law of negligence. This is because it tends to engender economic loss rather than personal injury and commonly arises in the context of a pre-existing (frequently contractual) relationship.

Professional negligence is itself open to fragmentation: different professions give rise to different legal problems. In the context of solicitors' liability, for example, fiduciary duties and loss of a chance issues give rise to particularly difficult questions. More generally, and worryingly for the purist, it has become apparent that certain principles of duty and causation are not applied universally – see for example, the inconsistent way in which the courts have applied the 'principles' in Chester v Afshar and SAAMCo to different professions. Then there are the specific areas of practice that give rise to disproportionate numbers of claims and where a particular body of case law develops: an example in the solicitors' context would be claims by lenders (an area where the current economic slow-down and housing slump is likely to give rise to a new wave of litigation).

Therefore, whether or not one regrets the increasing fragmentation of the law of negligence, and more specifically the law relating to professional negligence, a good textbook on solicitors' negligence and liability is to be welcomed.

And this is a good book. It is well structured, easy to use and, importantly, has been properly indexed. The authors have a clear, accessible style which makes the book easy to read. It is, as one would expect from two leading practitioners in the field, very well researched and bang up-to-date.

The first (and major) part of the book deals with general principles of liability. The second part deals with certain specific types of claim, including conveyancing, lenders' claims and litigation. The third, and final, part deals with procedure: there are useful chapters on costs orders against solicitors and disclosure and privilege.

There are, of course, some minor quibbles. For my part, given that this is essentially a practitioners' text, there is perhaps an overreliance on extracts from cases: these are to be found both in the text and in the footnotes. The extensive use of extracts breaks the flow of the text, making it in parts almost a cases and materials book. Moreover, the danger of extracts, however well chosen, is that they can easily give a misleading impression of the case as a whole. It may have been better if the material in the extracts had instead been woven into the text. Another (related) quibble is that the book is very long. At some 788 pages, it is more than twice as long as the last (and first) edition in 1999. There have clearly been developments since then but I suspect that the authors could have been more ruthless in the editing process, thereby producing a leaner, more concise, book, which still covered the same ground.

None of that, however, alters the fundamental point that this is a very good book that deserves to do well. And at £95 it is exceptionally good value.

Charles Dougherty Two Temple Gardens Professional Negligence, Vol. 24 No. 4, 2008

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