Barker and Lowe Legal Recoveries - sounds like a real legal firm - but is it?

A Payday lender was recently ordered to pay £2.6 million in compensation.

The company had been sending letters to customers who had fallen behind with their repayments. The letters threatened to take legal action against customers and charges were added to customers' accounts for the cost of sending the letters.

The letters appeared to have been sent by law firms, for example Barker and Lowe Legal Recoveries. However, the law firms did not really exist.

How to check a lawyer or firm

Most legal firms and lawyers are real, but before you ask a lawyer to carry out any work for you it is sensible to check they are genuine. You can also make sure that there are no disciplinary penalties against them.

Go to our type of lawyer page and click on the type of lawyer you intend to instruct from the list on the left hand side of the page. This will take you to facts about that type of lawyer.

To check whether a legal adviser or firm is regulated to offer legal services, you can check the legal services regulators' registers

Find more information from the Solicitors Regulation Authority's scam alert page about things to watch out for from bogus solicitors and scams.