23 Jul 2012 10:56 AM:
Christine Hi
Maria or any other solicitor will do nothing until you pay them in advance for services they are about to undertake (or not as the case may be). The rest of what fees are due comes out of what they get back for you. Generally payments to solicitors are staged and they are rarely if ever out of pocket (though they would disagree of course).
Maria somewhat indignantly carps on about her payments being according to the Bar association as is she is tied in some way to charge you what they dictate - which is of course utter rubbish. She also omitted the fact that costs in the Cadiz region are much more expensive than in the Malaga region, and quite apart from that she changed the goalposts anyway which has upset alot of people (myself included). Some would say you pays your money and takes your chance which isn't a very nice way of putting it however in most cases overseas investors are at the mercy of various middle men when it comes to trusting them with money and documentation.
A solicitor can't force you to pay anything and will be in the same boat as anyone else when the client is in another country, but the fact remains they would have covered themselves from the outset. If you or anyone else has managed to get a solicitor to do something for you without having paid them in advance I say well done - gve yourself a gold star!!
In this case however I assume you are trying to have money returned and her cut will come out of what she gets back and she'll deduct her share before you see any of yours! If she doesn't get anything back then you lose as well presumably??
To get back to your point if you don't want to pay, nothing will get done! If you don't want to pay so much find someone else or negotiate as best you can. By the way she's on this forum so if you want more detailed discussion you'll have to do it in private! These opinions are of course my own in case I've ruffled any feathers by generalising though I can assure you I speak from experience and have had many dealings with solicitors.
Community thread:
Pm me if you walked away from corvera phase 1 and was working with Maria
--------------------------------------