General Law & Advice

• Citizens Advice (www.adviceguide.org.uk) offers free legal advice mainly on debt and consumer issues, benefits, housing, legal matters, employment and immigration.
• Legal centres (www.lawcentres.org.uk) specialise in the law relating to welfare rights, immigration and nationality, housing and homelessness, employment rights, and sex and race discrimination.
• The Solicitors Pro Bono Group (www.probonogroup.org.uk) administers the 'pro bono' scheme, which is legal-speak for unpaid or charitable work done by lawyers.
• The Free Representation Unit (www.freerepresentationunit.org.uk) is a registered charity dedicated to providing free legal representation for those who cannot afford it before tribunals in areas where legal aid is unavailable. It specialises in employment and social security law, as well as some criminal injury compensation and immigration work.
• The Community Legal Service (CLS) (www.justask.org.uk) offers a guide to online legal resources.
• The government-backed Trading Standards (www.tradingstandards.gov.uk) has leaflets for business and consumers (giving advice on everything from buying a second-hand car to resolving a problem with your dry-cleaners).

• Check to see if your solicitor is a member of a Quality Assured panel, set up by the Law Society to demonstrate specialist knowledge to prospective clients. The Society runs panels in family, immigration, personal injury law, clinical negligence, Children Act proceedings, mental health tribunals, family mediation and planning law. You can find a list of members on its website at www.lawsociety.org.uk.
• Accident Line is the Law Society's own free personal injury referral service. It puts victims of accidents, caused by someone else, in touch with a specialist personal injury solicitor near their home or work.
• Organisations such as the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, Action for Victims of Medical Accidents and the Motor Accident Solicitors Society run their own accreditation schemes. There are no universal standards offered by accreditation schemes so it's worth checking how exacting membership is.
• Check with professional groups such as the Employment Lawyers  Association, the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and the Solicitors Family Law Association.
• The Law Society runs its own Quality Mark called 'Lexcel', which is another indicator of a good firm. Firms that display the Lexcel logo have been independently judged to meet the Society's own practice management standards.
• The Community Legal Service (CLS) has developed its own 'Quality Mark', another accreditation scheme, which is awarded only to organisations that pass regular quality checks. Providers who have achieved the Quality Mark will display the CLS logo in their offices.

Remember that in many cases you can use the first meeting to your advantage in order to get free advice from the solicitor. Usually a solicitor will be happy to provide you with unpaid legal guidance at the start of a case, should you so request it, in order to identify whether your case has merits and how it should best be pursued. It's also an opportunity for you to size up your lawyer as well. Many lawyers are more approachable and less stuffy than their reputation suggests. A willingness to have a chat about your case will give you a good measure of the kind of lawyer you are dealing with. You will find that many firms advertise a free first meeting in their promotional material and on their websites.

• Charging by the hour: this is the most common method of charging. Hourly rates vary from high street firms where you can expect to pay somewhere between £80 to £120 an hour for advice on private and commercial work all the way through to £350 an hour for a senior partner in a City firm for extremely expert advice on complex points of commercial law.
• Fixed fees: this form of payment has the obvious appeal of limiting your liability for legal costs and, after the hourly rate, it's the next most common way of charging. The obvious downside is that if your case concludes quickly, then you will end up paying more than you may have on the hourly rate basis.
• No win, no fee: 'No win, no fee' (NWNF) is a deceptively simple expression. On one level - and as the name implies - solicitors are paid nothing for their work if they lose, but it also covers agreements whereby solicitors can charge more if they are successful.
• Legal Aid/the Community Legal Service (CLS): To be eligible for Legal Aid, you have to show that you cannot pay for your case (i.e. that you are financially eligible) and that you have a sufficiently strong case that you are likely to win. Even if you're working, own your home and have savings, you may still qualify. However, you may well have to pay a contribution towards the cost of taking your case to court.
  
  

'No win, no fee' (NWNF) means that solicitors are paid nothing for their work if they lose, but it also covers agreements whereby solicitors can charge more if they're successful. Put simply, there are two types of NWNF:

1. Conditional fee agreements (CFAs): this is the only type of NWNF that is allowed for the vast majority of cases (with the exception of family and crime). The solicitor is allowed to charge a sum to reward his risk-taking in the event of a successful result which can be as much as double his fees. If you win, the losing side will (generally speaking) pick up this cost.
2. Contingency arrangements: the solicitor takes as his fee a straight percentage of the award (by contrast with a CFA where the lawyer charges a percentage increase on his or her fees). It's limited to cases which don't involve court proceedings, and is especially popular in employment tribunals and Motor Insurers' Bureau claims.

• Discuss the problem: If it's a problem relating to the service you've received, discuss the problem with either the solicitor directly or, if that's awkward, the partner in his or her firm responsible for complaints. All firms must have their own complaints procedures. If the solicitor is a sole practitioner (SP), then he or she may have an arrangement with another local firm or with the local Law Society to deal with complaints.
• Put your complaint in writing: Any complaint should eventually be recorded in writing. Your solicitor will then have a record of the details. You should keep a copy of your letter.
• Refer the case to the Law Society's Consumer Complaint Service: You should contact the Law Society if (i) you haven't received a detailed reply to your initial complaint from your solicitor within a reasonable time, say 28 days; (ii) you haven't been able to sort out your complaint with your solicitor; and (iii) your complaint is about a solicitor's conduct. It's important that you contact the OSS within six months of the matter you are complaining about. If you leave it any longer, it may decide not to investigate your complaint.

All chartered accountants are members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, who will assess your complaint to decide whether conciliation is appropriate or alternatively, carry out an investigation.

Other accountants may be members of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, or the Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountants. Book-keepers may belong to the Institute of Chartered Secretaries. All of these bodies will investigate and may take disciplinary action against the accountant if your complaint is upheld.

To complain, apply in writing to the listing officer at the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). This is called 'making a proposal'. Examples of valid reasons are where the property has been reduced in size or physically deteriorated so its value should be lower, or the area has gone downhill; perhaps a factory has been built next door. Alternatively, perhaps the property has been adapted to make it suitable for a person with disabilities - if so, take advice. If the VOA doesn't agree with your proposal, your application automatically becomes an appeal to the Valuation Tribunal after six months.

If you're being pursued by a creditor for an old debt, you may be able to ignore it on the ground that it has time-lapsed. This is six years, except in Scotland where it's five, but this only applies if no legal action has been taken against you on the debt, and you have not acknowledged it during the time. If you do now acknowledge it as a result of the creditor contacting you, you will reactivate the debt, so take advice before doing anything.

If HM Revenue & Customs says that you owe them money for a particular tax year, you may be able to get these arrears waived or appeal if this request is refused. This will be possible if (a) they had all the information they needed to make a decision; (b) by the time they let you know more than 12 months had gone by since the end of that tax year (in exceptional circumstances they may waive if it is less than 12 months); and (c) you reasonably believed your tax affairs were in order. You can also get arrears waived if the tax office paid you too much tax rebate, then tried to reclaim it after the end of the tax year. When you claim, say you are doing it under Extra Statutory Concession A19.

The website www.ripofftipoff.net can be used to report scams and frauds, but your starting point will be your local police or www.police.uk for all UK police forces. If the fraud has arisen in the area covered by the Metropolitan Police, log on to www.met.police.uk. For international fraud, there is also the United States' FBI site (the Internet Fraud Complaint Center) at www.ifccfbi.gov.

How you complain depends on who enforces parking penalties in your area. If it's the local authority, you can refuse to pay and after 28 days you will get a notice demanding payment. At that point you can make representations in writing (the notice tells you whom to send them to). If your representations are rejected, you can appeal to the Parking Appeals Service for the area. If you fail here and you still don't pay, the local authority will sue you, but you can try to defend the action in court.

If the police - usually via traffic wardens - enforce the penalties, you can refuse to pay the parking ticket fixed penalty, but complain in writing to the Chief Executive at the ticket office - the address is on the ticket. If they don't let you off, write to the relevant senior officer in the police force. A police officer will then investigate. A Magistrates' Court will then consider your case. If it disagrees, you may be found guilty and probably fined. (This may be two or three times the penalty plus costs.)

You're legally entitled to lop all foliage or branches overhanging up to boundary level, although you must get the consent of the local council in the case of a tree if there's a preservation order on it or if you're in a conservation area. Return the branches and any fruit on them to the neighbour's garden, being careful not to cause damage to them (otherwise the neighbour may try to claim compensation from you).

The school should have a policy on dealing with bullying or harassment that includes ways to tackle racially motivated bullying. If your child is going to stay away from school while the issue is being tackled, it's better to get medical evidence from your GP detailing the stress or anxiety. If there's racism involved, seek the support of the Commission for Racial Equality or the Race Equality Council for your area. You can also consider taking legal action against the school and the local education authority - take advice - and you can see the police if the offender is over ten years old. In addition, contact the Anti-Bullying Alliance or the Anti-Bullying Network.

Using Letter 2, from the Identity Theft Kit, contact all lenders immediately who you know have received fraudulent applications in your name. Each lender may require you to issue a Statutory Declaration or to fill out a form that denies your participation in the application. This is normal. Such forms should be signed and returned immediately under cover of Letter 3 from the Identity Theft Kit.