The Gazette 1985

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1985

Experience of dealing with Solicitors amongst the General Public — 1985

T HE SOCIETY commissioned Irish Marketing Sur- veys to conduct a survey of the experience of the public in dealing with solicitors and the following is a summary of the report presented to the Society. The survey comprised personal, face-to-face inter- views with a fully representative national sample of 1,399 adults aged 16 or older. Interviews were carried out nationwide during February 1985. The results of this survey show that one in three (34%) of the adult population claim to have had a personal or business dealings with solicitors during the previous five years. Comparable information was collected concerning certain other professional advisors and the survey showed that experience of dealings with solicitors was significantly higher than for dealings with insurance brokers (23% of adults), accountants (12%) or auct- ioneers (10%). The incidence of dealing with solicitors was well above the average amongst people who live in a rural area and well below it amongst Dubliners. Not sur- prisingly, more of the well-to-do middle class than working class people claimed to have used solicitors during the previous five years. In terms of the different age groups, it was only amongst those aged 16 to 24 that the proportion who had used the service of a solicitor was substantially below the national average. Only 29% of women, but 40% of men had dealt with solicitors during the five years period. It should be said of these that, in a general way, the same bias towards more widespread use amongst the rural population, the middle class and men was also found in the extent to which people had used the profes- sional services of insurance brokers, accountants or auctioneers. Those who had dealings with solicitors during the past five years were asked for what purpose they had gone to a solicitor, either personally or in connection with business or anything else. Just over 40% of them said they had been with solicitors in connection with property transactions of one kind or another. This was by far the most common reason given for going to a solicitor. The next most widespread circumstances (mentioned by 20%) were for claims or damages in con- nection with accidents or injuries, including traffic accidents. 15% of adults said they had used a solicitor regarding company or business matters and almost the same proportion had consulted a solicitor or, at least

had dealt with them, over wills, probate or the admin- istration of estates. As many as 18% said that during the past five years they had dealt with them in connection with other miscellaneous family matters. The survey results suggest that only a tiny minority of the public have been directly concerned with solicitors regarding tax advice, matrimonial disputes, debt col- lection services or criminal law matters, although in the last case one would expect some degree of underclaiming. Detailed analysis of the survey results confirmed that those who had gone to solicitors about company or business matters were predominantly middle class, urban and men. Three quarters of those who dealt with solicitors with regard to wills, probate and so forth were themselves aged fifty or older. A particularly interesting finding was the relative importance of claims or damages in connection with injuries or accidents in the use of solicitors' services by working class people. Only one in five of those who had dealt with solicitors in the past five years were unskilled working class, but they accounted for more than a third of those who had gone to a solicitor in connection with claims arising out of traffic or industrial accidents or injuries. Lastly, those interviewed who had dealt with solicitors during the past five years were asked how satisfied they had been with the service they had received on the last occasion they had seen a solicitor. They were asked to rate their degree of satisfaction on this five point scale with the results shown in the table: Entirely Satisfied 41% Mainly Satisfied 27% Fairly Satisfied 18% Mainly Dissatisfied 6% Entirely Dissatisfied 8% On the face of it, this is quite an encouraging result in that only 14% were actively dissatisfied with the service which they have received. On the other hand, it is also a fact that less than half of those interviewed were able to describe themselves as entirely satisfied. Naturally, there were differences in the extent of sat- isfaction expressed by different sections of the popu- lation. Men tended to be slightly less favourable than women; 35% of men expressed themselves entirely satis- fied, compared with half the women who had used solicitors. Working class users and those in the farming community tended to be slightly less satisfied than the middle class. 349