UK Yankee News

Consumers are at the heart of a package of measures to improve legal services announced by the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, today.

The new measures will introduce a regulatory framework covering all legal professionals, create a new complaints process and permit new arrangements for setting up legal businesses
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A single and fully independent body, the Office for Legal Complaints, will be set up to handle all consumer complaints against regulated legal service providers where the complaint cannot be resolved at the local level. A single point of entry will be easier to access, providing consistent, fair and professional handling of cases for all complainants.

Most importantly, it will be demonstrably independent, while providing quick and fair redress for consumers. The Office for Legal Complaints will be headed by a board with a Chair and majority membership appointed from outside the legal profession. Appointments are to be made on merit.

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1. Sir David Clementi published his report to Lord Falconer on 15 December 2004.

2. The professional bodies are the Law Society, Bar Council, Institute of Legal Executives, Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, Chartered Institute of Patent Agents, Council for Licensed Conveyancers, Immigration Services Commissioner and Court of Faculties.

Of the UK immigration law specialists based in England, Julia Onslow-Cole is the only one to appear in the list of most highly regarded practitioners across the globe. Karen Sturtivant was, however, frequently and emphatically recommended to us. Sturtivant, like the "excellent" Hilary Belchak of Kingsley Napley, is regarded as one of the leading immigration lawyers in the UK. Peter Alfandary of Reed Smith is similarly well regarded and respondents commented upon the strength of his firm's immigration team. (In support of this view, Caron Pope 's presence in this publication means that Reed Smith is the only firm operating in England to have two practitioners listed.) The "wonderful" Graeme Kirk of Gross & Co, chair of the Immigration and Nationality Committee of the International Bar Association, is also widely recognised by his peers as a leader in the field.

Laura Devine is described by one respondent as "superb" and is said to have a strong team behind her at her own firm. The "very good" Chris Magrath , also at his own firm, is "very well respected" and judging by the number of nominations he received is undoubtedly one of the UK's leading immigration law specialists. Philip Trott of Bates Wells & Braithwaite is equally well regarded. "An excellent practitioner", he emerges from the research as one of the jurisdiction's most respected individuals in this field of the law.

Being new in the UK, it's hard to grasp right away what the regional dialing codes mean and easy to lose money out of lack of understanding, especially with rogue companies out to take advantage of everyone. I'll try to cover the most common and most costly of them.

• 070 numbers: There seems to be little bit of trickery going on with some of these, and very costly. Site member/moderator GrahamE states on Well House Consultants that:

  "You can register one of these numbers at no cost to yourself and ask people to call you on it, and the calls will be put through to you. The intent is that they are "personal numbers" that you can divert from one phone to another, but many callers are unaware of how much it costs to call them and unless you're going to pre-alert people when you hand out your number, you're likely to have some very upset contacts."
  

  
  If you are asked to phone or fax a number with the prefix 070, you should be careful. You can incur a per minute charge of up to 50p/minute. And the call receiver, has gotten this service at little or no cost themself. While it is against the law for companies offering these personal redirected numbers to give commission from the calls to the person who hired the service, it may be possible that it's still happening, ads have been seen that indicate that some might be. It's easy to confuse because mobile numbers begin with 07.


• 0870, 0844, and 0871 numbers: GrahamE states on Well House Consultants that:

  "Numbers that start with 0870 are known as non-geographic telephone numbers and they're ones you might want to be careful of too. It depends on who your phone company is, but I don't think that many of the good rates that you get to a normal geographic number extend to them. I've been given a link to a site that lists alternatives to 0870 numbers and I pass it on in case it might be useful to you."
  



• 09 numbers: These numbers are most always pay service numbers such as prize claim lines, psychic hotlines, and the like. Beware the prize award flyers you get out of magazines and newspapers, you might win a £10 prize but spend more than that on the phone call to claim it!


• Telesales: It seems that in addition to what numbers we're aware of dialling, you have to be careful of being connected to a premium rate number by mistake. Some callers might suggest you key a number to find out what prize you've one, while not informing you the cost of keying that number as it will connect you to a premium number.


• Unwanted Sales Calls: Can be cut down by registering here: http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/what/. You can further prevent these from not giving your number to the sales agents in the town centres giving away holidays and such. I've found the most persistent callers are the window replacement and kitchen fitting firms.


• Blocking Premium Rate Numbers: Dial 150 on your BT landline to prevent calls to these numbers, you must go through an automated phone menu system to do this.


• International numbers: Beware of international numbers being rewritten to appear as though they are not international. International numbers (from the UK) always begin with 00 (ie. USA = 001) If you see a dash in between the written number as in 0-01.. it's still an international number!

For a more detailed guide to the cost of phone calls, please see Guide to charge rates, note Section 2.

0845 numbers are safe, these are Lo-call numbers, and charged at a local rate. 0800 numbers are used the same way as toll free numbers in the USA.