To Mediate or sue?

The Rules of Conduct of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors require its members to take disputes to arbitration before, or instead, of going to court. However the RICS has received complaints about its members taking clients to court for non-payment and seeks the assistance of solicitors instructed by a surveyor to sue for his fees to assist them in enforcing their rules of conduct. The head of their professional conduct department said that suing for fees was ‘out of line with the Woolf Reforms which say that lawyers are obliged to look at ADR as an option rather than going straight to court’. However a Law Society spokesman responded that solicitors were not acting unethically or improperly in ignoring the conduct issues relating to surveyors or other professionals. He said ‘If a solicitor is instructed by a client to sue, they will do that. The RICS should not expect other professions to enforce their own conduct rules’.