Playbook, law firm
Three different requests that all arrive as can I have my money back
A firm holds money in more than one character, and the difference decides the answer. Funds paid on account and not yet billed sit in the client account and were never the firm's. A fixed fee on a transaction that fell through is the firm's, subject to whatever the engagement said about abortive work. And a bill somebody thinks is too high is not a refund question at all, it is a costs question with its own route. Answering all three the same way is the failure here.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for refund requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Money held on account is client money kept separately, so returning an unbilled balance is not a refund in any ordinary sense, it is handing back funds the firm was only holding.
- Transactions abort regularly through nobody's fault, and whether an abortive fee is payable is set by the engagement terms for that work rather than by how far the matter got.
- A client who thinks a bill is too high is asking for it to be reviewed, and most jurisdictions provide a route for that which is quite separate from asking the firm to hand money back.
- Client account payments follow verification rules of their own, so returning money is slower and more procedural than a card refund, and a client expecting an instant reversal will chase it.
How it arrives
- my sale fell through do i get my money back
- i have a credit balance on my file can you send it to me
- can i get a refund on the fixed fee for my will
- you never did any work can i have the money on account back
- how long does it take to get money out of your client account
- i think i was overcharged how do i get some of it back
What has to be indexed for this to work
| How money on account is held and returned | That it is held separately as client money, when it is applied to a bill, and what happens to any balance when a matter closes. Written for a client rather than as an accounts rules summary, because the reassurance is the point. |
|---|---|
| Your abortive work terms, per work type | What is payable when a transaction falls through at each stage, and which third party costs are already spent and cannot come back. Conveyancing clients ask this the most and are the most likely to have assumed the fixed fee covered the risk. |
| The route for challenging a bill | Who reviews it, what the client can ask for, and the assessment procedure your jurisdiction provides with any time limit on it. Keep this apart from the refund material, because a client sent down the wrong path loses the stage that would have helped them. |
| How and how quickly client money is returned | The checks made before funds leave, which account it goes to, and a realistic period. Payments out of a client account are not instant and the wait produces most of the chasing messages in this pair. |
The reply
It depends which money you mean. Funds you paid on account are held as client money, and anything not applied to a bill is returned to you when the matter closes, after the usual checks on where it is going [1]. That is different from our fee on a transaction that falls through, where our abortive terms say what is payable at each stage and some third party costs will already have been spent [2]. If you think a bill itself is too high, that has its own review route rather than being a refund. I cannot see your account, so tell me which of these it is and leave your details and the team will pick it up.
It sorts the request before answering it, because the same words cover three different mechanisms and a general reply is wrong in two of them. Saying that client money was never the firm's is the reassurance the person actually wanted. Naming the checks before funds leave sets a realistic expectation and heads off the chasing message four days later.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names an amount, a matter or a date they paid, or says they have been waiting for money to come back.
I cannot see any account or check where a payment has got to. Leave me your name, an email and the matter reference and our accounts team will look at it and come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never promise that money will be returned, or say by when, since the assistant cannot see the ledger or the checks that have to run first.
- Never describe returning an unbilled balance as a refund, which suggests the firm is conceding something rather than handing back client money.
- Never say an abortive fee will be waived, which is a decision for the firm and for the engagement terms.
- Never route a bill dispute into a refund conversation when your jurisdiction provides a costs review with a time limit attached.
Questions
- Can it check whether a payment has been sent?
- No. It has no access to your client account, your ledgers or any banking system and cannot look up a client. It explains how returns work and hands the specific question to your accounts team by email.
- Does publishing abortive terms lose us work?
- It loses you the client who was going to be angry about them later. Somebody comparing firms on a transaction is already worried about the cost of a fall through, and a firm that states its position plainly answers a question the others leave open.
- How do we stop it treating a bill dispute as a refund?
- Keep them as separate documents with different vocabulary, and put the review route in the words your regulator or your jurisdiction uses. Then check the citations: a bill complaint answered from the client account page is visible immediately.
Keep reading
- Everything for a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- Handling refund requests in generalA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- The questionnaire behind a corporate client's instructionPanel onboarding, outside counsel guidelines and data terms come from a client's buyers, not from consumers, and none can be agreed in a chat.
- The firm's insurance and the client's are unrelated thingsProfessional indemnity cover belongs to the firm. Legal expenses cover on a caller's own policy may fund the matter. Not the same question.
- Out of hours on a law firm site means something has happenedOut of hours here is rarely about opening times. It is an arrest, an injunction or a hearing in the morning, and a form is not enough.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.