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A REVOLUTIONARY WAY TO GET DIVORCED
Mersey Life talk to Chris Sweetman and Peter Marples of Fair Result , a team of specialist divorce lawyers offering a new approach to achieve a fairer result for clients .
Why did you set up fair-result ? Through a frustration with the existing process of divorce where often wives are starved of cash so they can ' t defend themselves properly and it takes far too long to get a divorce done because of the processes and the reticence of lawyers to quickly move to negotiation – this was through our own personal experiences as much as supporting people over the past few years informally .
We don ' t have time sheets for our team – we just won ’ t allow it and we don ’ t have hourly rates for our clients . This means our client is not fearful of contacting us as we won ' t bill for telephone conversations or emails .
So why is fair-result different ? Basically we are a fully fixed fee divorce business – whilst there are plenty that advertise a fixed fee , nobody in the country has a fully fixed fee for every aspect of the divorce and which isn ’ t payable until the divorce is finalised and the consent order is approved .
So you take the risk and the cash flow risk ? Absolutely , if the divorce takes 12 months , we don ’ t get paid a bean until the end and we pay all of the costs of the divorce out of our own resources – court costs , our time , barrister fees , valuation fees etc .
What is the benefit of your approach to the client ? Basically we cut through the chaff and focus on getting a fair and equitable result for our clients . After all , when a marriage has broken down the arguments are about the financials – so we focus on the
‘ marital pot ’ from the outset – there is no reason a divorce cant be settled within 4 months , even the most complex of cases .
We bring together financial skills and legal skills in one team and our clients get a barrister opinion on our settlement proposals from the start .
This means we finalise cases more quickly and most importantly the client gets calls answered 24 / 7 as we don ’ t want to delay a negotiation .
How is business ? The model is really gaining traction – we are winning 3 - 4 clients a week with little or no advertising and entirely through word of mouth . Most importantly , we are settling cases , despite lawyers wanting to delay things for no real reason often . We are even in discussions with professionals in Australia who love what we are doing .
We are currently working on some exciting exclusive contracts which will be announced soon which will put us in the position of becoming the largest divorce practice in the UK within the next 2 years .
So how does it work ? 80 % of our clients at the moment come from people who are dissatisfied with existing service levels and escalating costs . We commence by having a detailed discussion about the circumstances ,
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