Professional Negligence and Claims for bad advice

Whilst we believe that most professional advisors adhere to the same high standards that we do at Hewetts, we know that there are cases where Clients suffer a loss at the hands of negligent or even dishonest professional advisors.

If you have been let down by a professional advisor then you need to be confident that you are taking the correct steps towards putting matters right.

Hewetts provides a comprehensive service for professional negligence claims and deals with disputes against many different professional advisors, including accountants, architects, insurers, financial advisers, solicitors, surveyors and tax consultants.

Examples of professional negligence claims might be:

• Claims against solicitors and barristers arising from failed litigation
• Claims against surveyors for failing to properly value or identify defects with property
• Misselling of financial products such as pensions, share portfolios, endowments and with profits policies
• Claims against architects, often jointly with engineers and builders
• Negligent tax advice, in particular inheritance tax planning

Professional negligence is a complex and specialist area of law. Professionals and their insurers use large law firms with years of experience to try and defeat professional negligence claims. It is therefore important you ensure you are represented by lawyers with equivalent experience and knowledge. Our focussed approach and our ability to negotiate in highly contentious situations enable us to achieve the best results for our clients.

We provide an early assessment of the merits of your case and we are proactive and cost effective in seeking a successful resolution on your behalf. We will explore solutions to bring an early resolution to cases without the need for court proceedings. However if this is not possible we deliver focussed support, practical guidance and effective representation drawing on the whole firm’s knowledge and resource to achieve the best results for our clients.

We will thoroughly investigate your case and provide you with a realistic assessment of your case. Where necessary we will obtain expert evidence. We will then advance the claim on your behalf to the professional and his insurers and we will actively seek to negotiate a settlement of your claim without the need for court proceedings.

The professional negligence team is committed to providing you with the latest funding options and we are able to offer a variety of arrangements including privately paying fees, conditional fees and after the event insurance.

We will discuss your specific options at the outset of our instructions and we will do everything we can to assist in helping you choose the most appropriate route.

We operate a national service for professional negligence and represent people from all over England and Wales.