Harper James Reviews 

Great Experience. Did exactly what we needed. Friendly, knowledgeable and cost effective. Will definitely use again.

I was and I am still so impressed with the Harper James team. I became an Enterprise member which is a thoroughly affordable plan for a small business before I went through a commercial lease and various other things that come after an investment round. I worked closely with Rachel, who really kept me calm and kept all of her comms and next steps digestable. A stressful process kept calmer by having a great team. Thank you.

Professional

I was extremely satisfied with the way Harper James handled the process for my company. Pam was knowledgeable and attentive with each step. Her commitment to attention to detail and professional communication was exceptional. I look forward to working with Pam and Harper James again in the future.

Very disappointed with Harper James solicitors.
I would not recommend this firm to anyone unfortunately.
Very slow to respond to correspondence and do not answer all questions raised in correspondence when they do eventually return emails. This then results in more expense with having to try and correspond with them again on the same subject matter.
I was given poor and inadequate advice by them so I terminated their services.
I have since found a better firm of solicitors that have successfully resolved all of my issues. Were quick to respond to all correspondence and saved me thousands of pounds.

Best to avoid Harper James and find a better and more efficient firm of solicitors.

The Harper James Solicitors Corporate Finance team have acted for me for the past 8 years, I highly recommend them for their advice and diligence in all legal matters. As business legal costs are a key factor in appointing your legal representation, HJS are been competitive and never let me down in this regard.

Elizabeth is a good lawyer who is very professional. She helped me solve the problem and I will continue to work with her in the future，Thank you!

We value the professionalism and dedication demonstrated by Harper James team throughout our partnership. They are client oriented with strong communication skills and analytical thinking. We appreciate the work that Harper James has contributed to our company's project especially that we are overseas legal entity not quite familiar with English law peculiarities

I have had the pleasure of working with Harper James for many years, across several different companies. Their consistency in support, speed of response, and quality of lawyers are second to none. From navigating complex legal challenges to providing day-to-day advice, they have always been top class. Recently, they supported me through the acquisition of a new company, and currently with a new property lease agreement and their expertise has been invaluable.

Harper James is particularly great for SMEs, understanding our unique needs and guiding us appropriately. If you're looking for a reliable, knowledgeable, and responsive law firm, I highly recommend Harper James.

We are now well into our sixth year working with Harper James. When we first sought to engage with HJS, our part-time, in-house legal advisor was retiring and we were faced with the decision of recruiting or outsourcing. Ultimately, we felt the 'On Demand' package offered by Harper James would be no more expensive than employing our own part-time legal advisor, but would provide us with flexibility to scale up/down our legal advice requirements as and when needed, with the added benefit of having access to specialists in different areas of law on the odd occasion this was needed. The prospect of not having all the costs/risks associated with recruiting/employing an in-house legal advisor was an added bonus.

Our primary requirement for legal advice is to assist with drafting and reviewing contracts with commercial clients (which owing to the heavily regulated environment we operate in within financial services, means such contracts can be complex) and suppliers, however we occasionally need legal advice for other matters, such as intellectual property, contract disputes etc.

Throughout our time with HJS, most matters have been dealt with by one of HJS' commercial partners, whom through regular use, quickly understood how our business operates and what was important to us. As a result, we receive quick responses and our quota of hours goes a long way, often resulting in unused hours rolling over from one year to the next at renewal.

HARPER JAMES. I would describe them as a very expensive secretarial service at best. Their model is about billing as much as they can and not about their clients. The proof: Harper James spent £100,000 of my money on a process that stood no realistic prospects of success. They claim to do this day in day out. They claim they are experts. Yet they didn't know! Rubbish - if I did that in my job I'd be sacked and rightly so. They follow a legal process slavishly without the slightest bit of commercial common sense. Why wouldn't they use common sense - they get to bill their time and its not in their interest. They then claim that they have given good legal advice - but frankly you can get the law from a text book or the internet or go straight to Counsel - they should be able to do this as they are lawyers. The bit that is missing is advice - not to repeat what is in a book and charge you for it. Then they will threaten legal action in court on 30th July for an invoice raised on 15th July! Very aggressive and adversarial but that is their model - bill and threaten. Overall a very upsetting experience .

RESPONSE TO YOUR REPLY

I'm afraid you have been wrongly informed, You have failed to check the facts. Had you done so, you would better understand my valid frustration. No amount of 'concoction' can cover the facts.

Firstly, while you are correct in stating I had been engaging in recovering a position, you are very much INCORRECT to state that I had done so without success. Through my OWN endeavours I secured a full recovery. HJ were NOT engaged in this aspect and had no involvement in any discussions. It is GALLING to read the complete fabrication that infers that you positively influenced the "successful recovery of the near seven-figure loss" and how the recovery points to your strategic brilliance. Using a football analogy, you neither scored the goal nor assisted. In fact you weren't on the same pitch or playing the same game. This is a matter I resolved without your advice. My correspondence with the other party pre dates HJ's involvement. Indeed this is a specialism and the engagement with HJ explicitly excludes any advice on this matter.

HJ advised on potential litigation only. You spent £100,000 of my money because you advised that this was a good investment. It was a complete waste of money. I'm not even debating that you provided legal advice. Your secretarial services of posting the information I gave to you and engaging Counsel to provide advice were perfectly adequate.

What is at issue is that you advised that I had a claim against a previous advisor and encouraged the use of 3rd party counsel and court fees as you state. I backed you up trusting that you knew what you were doing. It then transpired, having spent £100k that there wasn't a particularly strong case all along and the risks and cost of litigation was commercially unattractive in all scenarios. Quite why you were not able to identify this risk properly and deal with this first before spending £100k is the question you need to answer. What you did was run around incurring cost without managing the risk - i.e a secretarial service. You claim to be experts. You claim to do this all the time. Any way you look at it, if you think that putting your clients in this situation is in any way an acceptable commercial answer which you obviously do, then it should remain open for any potential client of HJ to reflect on the wisdom of appointing you.

It is unfortunate that rather than putting your hands up and accepting the obvious corollary of wasting £100k of clients money i.e. that you didn't do at all well, sadly you would rather argue the indefensible. Ultimately, this says it all in terms of the culture and values of HJ.

After a great onboarding experience from the Harper James client team, we’ve been supported by Jill on a commercial IP case. What could have been complex, costly and drawn out, was so straight forward with Jill. She secured a settlement in our favour and we couldn’t recommend her more! It feels great to have an array of legal expertise on your side, so we can focus on running our business.

I have worked with Harper James now for a few years and the experience has always been great. We have a variety of legal enquiries and everyone we speak to are very helpful, and respond quickly, clearly and often to tight deadlines.

Please avoid.
I used this company for what should have been a simple contract between contractor and land owner. Despite advertising that they do this work, the person allocated to me didn't seem to have a clue what they were doing. I have had no contact since March where a seemingly concerned senior member of the company was very understanding and was offering the world to make it right - they are now threatening to take me to court for refusing to pay an hourly rate over triple that I was advised it would take and that I never consented for.
I would strongly advise you to look elsewhere, this company is incompetent, has poor communication and will attempt to pull the wool over your eyes to line their pockets.

We've been working with Harper James since we founded our company and they are a great legal partner for us. From establishing the company, through overseeing 3 investment rounds, to helping on share options and trademark topics. We are super happy with the help we're getting from each one of the professionals we work with.

Lawyer at Harper James took up the case at short and helped us achieve a sucessful outcome.
Her judgment and advice was consistent from the start and proved right.
More than happy with the experience.

Trying to resolve a dispute between two parties and Samantha W is always unavailable to call and takes over a week to respond to emails. So unprofessional.

This was a first step for us in terms of taking a lease on a larger property. Sam really understood that this was a big comittment from us so was patient in her approach, and was always looking to make sure we were protected from any clauses that werent in our favour.
Due to the landlord being awkward a straight forward process became more complex but Sam was professional and able to guide us through the process. We ended up cancelling the negatiations towards in the end, again with Sam guiding us through that process as well, and then entered negotiations with another landlord. Thankfully we were able to get this one over the line. Communication was always quick and messages were always returned.
We are very grateful to Sam for her help as we couldnt have done it without her.

Harper James provided a responsive, efficient, and professional service. The cost was reasonable, and materially less than had I engaged a typical law firm.

Professional Lawyers, and efficient business setup and communication. However, we were roped into the enterprise with expectation that we would be building up credits to use later in the future. Come to find out that unless you renew the plan all money spent on credits is lost, and we weren't given the option to stop the membership at any point, whilst our business was still in the early stages and didn't need to use the credits. May be a good company for one off projects.

Overall, company seems far more interested in profiting off of customers than building a loyal customer base.