It can be used against you in Court if you were to make a statement that the company is a "scam solicitor".
Maybe an analogy to sales would make this more understandable: If I was selling computers and the laptop I sold you had some serious issues, you cannot immediately turn around and call me a scammer. Because it might not be true, actually there is a more likely explanation that I didn't know about the issues with the laptop.
Now if you would talk to me instead and I would insist that there couldn't possibly be an issue with the laptop and charge you for the faulty product, you _might_ call me a scammer. (Maybe one single instance of this wouldn't even be enough. Maybe you would even need to prove that I did in fact know about the problem with the laptop)
On the other hand you can definitely leave a review saying that you received a bad product. You would not be required to talk to the company to be able to do that.
Edit: To further elaborate a bit because I think people in this thread are having some weird reactions to this ruling: It's pretty normal that you cannot go around and tell lies that hurt somebody's business. If you think about it this is very normal. I cannot stand in front of a bakery with a sign that says "The bread in this bakery contains dangerous amounts of lead" if that is not in fact true. And if nobody buys bread anymore because of my sign, I will be liable for the damages incurred.
This is less clear if my sign says: "In my opinion the bread in this bakery tastes funny." Because this is an opinion rather than a fact.
But in the case at hand we are talking about somebody calling a company a "scam solicitor". That's mostly a factual statement, you could prove that the company is either doing regular business or that they are scamming people. If the defendant is not able to prove that they are in fact a scam business, it's very reasonable to assume that he is liable. The concrete damages incurred are however debatable in my opinion.
I don't think that laptop analogy works. If someone (re)sells a faulty laptop then they may indeed not realise that laptop has a problem - you could argue they should have tested it better, but at worst they've been negligent. But the product in this case was a document written by the lawyers; they can't claim they didn't know what was in it, because they wrote it! If it really did just contain the background notes supplied by the buyer, without any extra research or substantive legal opinion, then it sounds to me that it really did con him out of that money.
Yeah, I also don’t understand some of the responses here. An analogy would be that someone has a problem with some software they are using, so they do a bit of research and find a possible answer on Stack Overflow, and they hire a software developer to help them implement a fix. The software developer bills them £200 and provides detailed instructions on fixing it.
The individual leaves a review for the software developer saying “I paid upfront for help with my software. But what I got was just the Stack Overflow information I sent them, reworded and sent back to me. Another scam developer.”
If the developer uses the site the review was left on to obtain business and they can demonstrate a specific monetary loss after the review was posted, they have claims for damages. A non-trivial portion of a software developer’s job is looking stuff up on Stack Overflow, so applying that knowledge using their experience isn’t scammy at all.
Details of the legal advice provided are missing, but the same could be true. Client sends contract and seeks advice on what their obligations are upon contract termination, and the law firm responds by rewording the portion of the contract which spells out their obligations. If they find the obligations to be obvious, then maybe they didn’t need legal advice in the first place. If they don’t understand the quoted obligations, they should follow up asking for clarification. But saying “another scam solicitor” is libelous.
And isn’t his offer to remove the review in exchange for a refund considered extortion?
Maybe an analogy to sales would make this more understandable: If I was selling computers and the laptop I sold you had some serious issues, you cannot immediately turn around and call me a scammer. Because it might not be true, actually there is a more likely explanation that I didn't know about the issues with the laptop.
Now if you would talk to me instead and I would insist that there couldn't possibly be an issue with the laptop and charge you for the faulty product, you _might_ call me a scammer. (Maybe one single instance of this wouldn't even be enough. Maybe you would even need to prove that I did in fact know about the problem with the laptop)
On the other hand you can definitely leave a review saying that you received a bad product. You would not be required to talk to the company to be able to do that.
Edit: To further elaborate a bit because I think people in this thread are having some weird reactions to this ruling: It's pretty normal that you cannot go around and tell lies that hurt somebody's business. If you think about it this is very normal. I cannot stand in front of a bakery with a sign that says "The bread in this bakery contains dangerous amounts of lead" if that is not in fact true. And if nobody buys bread anymore because of my sign, I will be liable for the damages incurred.
This is less clear if my sign says: "In my opinion the bread in this bakery tastes funny." Because this is an opinion rather than a fact.
But in the case at hand we are talking about somebody calling a company a "scam solicitor". That's mostly a factual statement, you could prove that the company is either doing regular business or that they are scamming people. If the defendant is not able to prove that they are in fact a scam business, it's very reasonable to assume that he is liable. The concrete damages incurred are however debatable in my opinion.