Dispute Resolution

We will advise you as if we were standing in your shoes, providing not just legal help on your situation but also our honest opinion in plain English. We can be involved in your case as much or as little as you would like us to be. Whether you seek a one hour appointment to go through a claim you are managing for yourself, or to instruct us to have complete conduct of your case.

How we can help

• Helping you understand how to make or defend a claim, what happens in court, and what your rights are.
• Advising on alternative legal routes to court action, to save you time, money and stress.
• Help with understanding exactly what your legal rights are in your personal situation and what the prospects of success are.
• Managing difficult communications.
• Setting a strategy to end your dispute quickly and effectively .
• Review possible alternative sources of funding.

Keeping you out of court 

Court cases can be extremely expensive to run. Just paying the court fee to issue the claim can cost 5% of the amount of the claim, up to a limit of £10,000.

More and more of our clients are looking at different ways to settle disputes in a more cost effective way. Collectively these methods are known as Alternative Dispute Resolution or ADR.

We can help you decide on the most appropriate form of ADR. It might be as simple as a well prepared and well organised “round table” meeting, a Mediation using a qualified Mediator to broker a binding but shared settlement, an Arbitration using a professional Arbitrator to impose a binding decision, or an Expert Determination where a technical expert provides a non-binding opinion on whose case is likely to win. 

As well as saving costs, these options have the added advantage of putting the parties more in control of the process and the outcome.

How we have helped people 

• A client had consistently been promised his uncle’s entire estate when he died, and the uncle made a Will to that effect. He subsequently changed the Will after getting into a new relationship and left the client only 5% of his estate. Having relied on the promise, the client had not paid off his mortgage and had not made any provision for his pension, and was in a poor financial position as a result. We sued for the whole estate and achieved a satisfactory outcome by mediation
• Making a claim for a director and 50% shareholder against her business partner and ex husband for defrauding the company and HMRC by falsely claiming £hundreds of thousands of expenses.
• Defending a director of a failed business against a Director’s Disqualification claim.
• Pursuing one of four directors of an investment company for wrongly extracting the proceeds of sale of a property for her own personal benefit.
• Seeking the liquidator’s consent via court proceedings to use a “prohibited name” of the previous business in a new copyright and designs.
• Advising property owners of their rights of way/claims for adverse possession and boundary disputes.
• Acting for residential landlords in recovering possession of property from tenants relying upon s.21 and s.8 notices.
• Acting for a founder director of a business to assist in “divorcing” from her co-director including splitting the right to copyright and designs.
• Our client was the major beneficiary of his father’s Will. The father fell under the influence of some strangers, and they drafted a new Will for him, which left the majority of the estate to them and nothing to the client. The new Will was dubious and the strangers – having gone to the trouble to draft it and appoint themselves as executors – renounced and did not seek to obtain a grant of probate.  We issued a citation to propound the new Will, and when no response to that was made, we were able to prove the earlier Will to put the client back in the position of being the major beneficiary of his father’s estate.

How we work with you

Whilst based in the South of England, Paris Smith acts for businesses and families throughout the UK. Technology has enabled us to provide a high level of service to our clients whether they are local to our offices or not. Our advice can be given in many ways:

• Over the telephone
• Via video conferencing
• In face to face meetings

We will talk through how you would like to be contacted and the best ways for us to meet in our early conversations with you.

Meet the Team

Our Personal Disputes team is made up of 9 partners, 2 associates, 6 solicitors, 1 legal executive and 1 trainee solicitor. You can find their contact details below.