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You arrived at this page by selecting:Commissions
Lawyers should not accept commissions from anybody. So whatever their advice, you can be sure it is based on your interests and is not in the slightest bit influenced by any commission or similar payment received from anybody else.
Very occasionally however, your lawyer will receive or be offered a commission or similar even though they never expected it or sought it out. In that event the commission should be disclosed to you and credited to your account. So you will receive it, not your lawyer.
When this happens, you might be better off letting the lawyer keep the commission in return for not sending you a bill. This is because commissions are not subject to VAT.
For example, imagine a bill would be £1,000 and the lawyer has received a commission of £1,000. If the lawyer bills the client £1,000 he has to add VAT, so that adds 17.5% and the bill will be £1,175. The commission can be credited to that but that still leaves £175 that the client has to pay. But if the client allows the lawyer to keep the commission in return for not rendering a bill, no VAT will be payable so the client will have nothing to pay. Daft but true!
The same principle works if the commission is less than the bill. In that event the bill could be reduced by the amount of the commission to save the VAT on that amount. If the commission is more than the bill, there would be no VAT and the balance of the commission would go to the client.
The important thing is that the client knows about the commission and decides what should be done with it.
Gifts
Occasionally clients think their lawyer is so wonderful that they want to buy them a gift, or leave them something in their will or whatever. A lawyer should not accept any gift, except one of a purely nominal value.
