Case studies

General principles

  • Original documents intended for the consumer belong to the consumer. Solicitors should always send client care letters and statute bills. So if a consumer hasn’t been sent one before, they should be sent one when they request it.

  • Not doing so is a service failing – and the remedy will likely be providing one in a reasonable time (we’ll consider if there is any other detriment on a case-by-case basis).

  • Copies of documents the consumer has previously been sent belong to the solicitor. If a consumer wants a copy, a solicitor should generally look to provide it. However, they may charge a reasonable fee to do so.

  • If there’s a dispute about what’s reasonable, we’ll decide that on a case-by-case basis – looking at information including what the solicitor originally told the consumer about file storage costs.

Consumer complains about fee for providing copy of bill – we agree admin fee is reasonable


Mr A emailed his former solicitors, asking for the client care letter from when they represented him in a personal injury claim several years ago. The solicitors said he should have received a client care letter at the start of his case, and would need to charge him for what he was now asking for. Mr A agreed that he had probably been sent the letter at the time, but had lost it.

The solicitors provided Mr A with a copy, charging a £25 administrative charge reflecting the time and cost of getting the file out of storage, photocopying the client care letter and sending it to him. Mr A wasn’t happy with this and complained to us.

We found that it was clear in the solicitor’s file closure letter that Mr A’s file would be put in off-site storage three months later, and that there would be a cost for retrieval. In our view, the solicitors had charged a reasonable fee for providing what Mr A had asked for.

Consumer complains that solicitor won’t provide client case letter – we tell them to provide it


Ms B emailed her former solicitors asking for the client care letter from when they represented her in a personal injury claim several years ago. The solicitors said her file had been sent to an off-site archive, and that because she’d previously been sent a client care letter, they wouldn’t send her a copy now. Ms B complained to us about this decision. 

In our view, asking for a copy of the client care letter was a reasonable request – even if the firm needed to make a reasonable charge for the time involved. We discussed this with the solicitors and they arranged, for a small fee, for a copy of the client care letter to be made so Ms B could collect it from their office reception.