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How SEN Legal Limited Compares

Value for money

This firm - 89%
National Average
Poor Competitive Excellent

Excellent does not necessarily mean ‘cheap’. It means that clients thought that the level of service received was Excellent for what they paid.

This score has been calculated using up to the last 300 reviews left by clients of SEN Legal Limited on ReviewSolicitors.

As part of our review questionnaire we ask reviewer questions about the value for money they felt they received by using SEN Legal Limited. These questions include:

  • Value for money (a rating of 1-5)
  • How much were you initially quoted or how much did you expect to pay?
  • Approximately how much did you end up spending for the legal services provided (ignoring disbursements and court fees)
  • Did you think this was underpriced, overpriced or about right?
  • Overall experience

We use data science to amalgamate the answers to these questions and create a ‘ReviewSolicitors score’ out of 100. The above chart representation score is a simple percentage representation of the averaged score across those who have reviewed this law firm.

Underpriced 0%
Overpriced 0%
About Right 100%

If you would like to read more about how we work with our review data please see our Transparency section.

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Would recommend to
friends and family

This firm - 89%
National Average
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

ReviewSolicitors uses our community data to show you how many clients used SEN Legal Limited and have had a satisfactory experience where they have indicated that they would recommend the services of the law firm to their friends and family.

You can use this data to see how SEN Legal Limited performs against other law firms nationally. A score close to 100% indicates that this firm is highly valued by their clients.

As part of our review questionnaire we ask the question:

"Would you recommend this firm to somebody else?"

The reviewer can select either “Yes” or “No”.

The above score is a simple percentage representation of the total amount of clients who selected the “Yes” option:

Yes 89%
No 11%

If you would like to read more about how we work with our review data please see our Transparency section.

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Satisfied with
outcome of matter

This firm - 89%
National Average
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

ReviewSolicitors uses our community data to show you how many clients used SEN Legal Limited and were satisfied with the outcome of their matter. Being satisfied with the outcome of your matter is an important consideration to have in mind.

You can use this data to see how SEN Legal Limited compares to the national average of clients being satisfied with the outcome of their matter after instructing a solicitor.

As part of our review questionnaire we ask the question:

"Were you satisfied with the outcome of your case?"

The reviewer can select either “Yes” or “No”.

The above score is a simple percentage representation of the total amount of clients who selected the “Yes” option:

Yes 89%
No 11%

If you would like to read more about how we work with our review data please see our Transparency section.

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Rankings by area of expertise

The rankings below show the areas of expertise that SEN Legal Limited offers to clients. You can see how good the service offered is in comparison to all other law firms nationally.

Data shown above is based on the reviews and client feedback collected by ReviewSolicitors over the last 12 months.

Review Sources

Client Reviews

4.6/5

Reviews summary

  • Excellent

    33
  • Very Good

    0
  • Average

    0
  • Poor

    1
  • Awful

    3

Overall experience

  • Value For Money
  • Communication
  • Initial Impressions
  • Approachability
  • Documentation Accuracy
  • Legal knowledge
Shazia

Shazia

March 11, 2024

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Excellent service!

Richard Nettleton and the SEN Legal team are absolutely amazing!

They made what was an extremely worrying and stressful time, so much easier to deal with and we were successful!

I wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.

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Suzy

Matter Type:

Education

Suzy

February 18, 2024

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Richard Nettledon and Annabel Moore

My husband and I contacted SEN legal to help us fight the LA to get our son into the correct school! Richard Nettledon was absolutely superb and explained the whole process all the way through in a manner we could understand. From our very first meeting with a Richard he filled us with confidence and managed to win our case 8 months before it was meant to go to tribunal. Annabel Moore, Richards Para Legal was very good at explaining the process and responding to emails promptly. The whole process was stress free and actually worked out to be cheaper than what we first expected.

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Dulanka

Dulanka

January 14, 2024

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Experience with SEN Legal

We used SEN Legal to appeal against our atrocious Local Authority for their handling of our son’s secondary school placement. From the first day, SEN Legal with the team assigned to us - Richard Nettleton and Annabel were exceptional.

They were friendly, approachable, meticulous and methodical with their explanation of legal strategy, their production of documents and preparation of the groundwork and paperwork and took us step by step patiently through the entire process.

Their recommendations and advice at every step of the way was accurate, to the point and clear. We put our trust in them and they absolutely delivered.

It is expensive, no doubt. But my wife and I knew that it was money well spent from the quality of the work they did.

We won our case with the Local Authority settling the days before the tribunal. They didn’t have a leg to stand on. We couldn’t have achieved this result on our own. It was clear from the legal weight, approach and strategy utilised by SEN Legal, that by ourselves we would have struggled.

Thank you Richard and Annabel for all your help in our son’s case.

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Anonymous

Verified review

This review has been left by a verified client who used SEN Legal Limited.

Matter Type:

Education

Anonymous

December 19, 2023

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Excellent, specialist and professional support

We had an issue arising with the local authority concerning the EHCP for our youngest child, who has fairly extensive special needs. It was an enormous relief to deal with the team at SEN Legal, who helped us through a successful outcome.

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A very happy parent

Verified review

This review has been left by a verified client who used SEN Legal Limited.

A very happy parent

December 15, 2023

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Highly recommend SEN Legal

SEN Legal is gold standard. They know their stuff inside and out. They are pragmatic and outcomes orientated. And their team is best in class: smart, informed, experienced, on top of their brief at all times, always available and in touch, straightforward and lovely to deal with. Most importantly: they get results.

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Vicki Irish

Verified review

This review has been left by a verified client who used SEN Legal Limited.

Matter Type:

Education

Vicki Irish

December 11, 2023

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Couldn’t have done it without you!

We contacted SEN Legal wanting to take the LA to tribunal over our son’s post 19 local offer and to update his EHCP to reflect his true needs. If anyone has been in this position you will know how daunting this is and how completely powerless you feel. From the very beginning everyone at SEN Legal was supportive and professional, guiding us through this trying and complex process. We were kept informed every step of the way (thank you Bethan!) and I couldn’t rate Melinda Nettleton and John (our Barrister) highly enough for how they transformed our son’s EHCP.
Due to the hard work and professionalism of SEN Legal our son is now happily attending Sense College with an EHCP which truly reflects his needs.
Words cannot convey how delighted we are over this result and we would encourage anyone in a similar situation to seek the same advice and support from the team at SEN Legal.

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Holly

Matter Type:

Education

Holly

December 04, 2023

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Excellence - from no school to independent specialist place

Before contacting SEN Legal, we were completely ignored by the local authority. Within a day of SEN Legal sending a pre-action letter, we had a response from the LA after there had been nothing but silence from them for months despite our trying to contact them repeatedly and their breaching legal deadlines. Richard skilfully navigated us through the appeal process when the LA did not name a school for our child. Without SEN Legal, our son would not be in school and not getting the support he needs. We are so very grateful to Richard, Sophie, and the SEN Legal team for making an exceedingly stressful and incomprehensibly thorny process, manageable - and most importantly, successful. Throughout the process, Richard and Sophie were fantastic at communicating our options, efficient and proactive at chasing loose ends and heading off anything that would have meant our son received less provision than he needs. Their guidance was always sound and frankly, invaluable. We truly appreciated their expertise and sensitivity when dealing with our case. We could not recommend SEN Legal more highly.

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Alan

Verified review

This review has been left by a verified client who used SEN Legal Limited.

Matter Type:

Education

Alan

December 01, 2023

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Great legal service

We appointed SEN legal to help us get the best education for our grandchild. The LA we’re not taking their responsibilities seriously and not providing anywhere near the support our grandchild needed. After contacting SEN legal it then became very clear what we had to do and SEN legal supported us through what was a very tortuous journey.

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B.SEA

Verified review

This review has been left by a verified client who used SEN Legal Limited.

Matter Type:

Education

B.SEA

November 29, 2023

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Expert Advice and Support

We are extremely grateful for the expert advice and support during what was a very anxious and stressful time for us.

We were impressed with your highly professional and competent services and found the fast response reassuring.

The process was greatly helped by your insightful and accurate expertise.

Your hard work gained many results including your attendance at the emergency annual review meeting after exclusion, resolving issues with the Local Authority regarding the Educational Health Care Plan, success in securing HLTA 1-1 in her plan, having the exclusion rescinded and ultimately keeping her in her mainstream setting. You have achieved all this and avoided tribunal and for this we are extremely grateful.

Thank you Richard!

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Anonymous

Verified review

This review has been left by a verified client who used SEN Legal Limited.

Matter Type:

Education

Anonymous

November 26, 2023

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EHC plan establishment including tribunal

The whole team at SENlegal have been professional, hard working and of the highest quality. With their guidance we have acheived all our goals and established an EHC plan which will enable our son to meet his potential.

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Reviews collected from

Bella

Matter Type:

Education

Bella

December 15, 2023

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Bella

Richard Nettleton and the SEN Legal team are gold standard. They know their stuff inside and out. They are pragmatic and outcomes orientated. They are smart, informed, experienced, on top of their brief at all times, always available and in touch, straightforward and lovely to deal with. I'm so grateful to them for their support and for the result they achieved.

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Lee

Matter Type:

Education

Lee

October 09, 2023

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Lee

SEN Legal have provided us with expert legal knowledge, invaluable help and successful outcomes! We are extremely grateful and delighted with this service.

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Robert

Matter Type:

Education

Robert

April 26, 2023

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Robert

We used Richard's firm as we had already been through a protracted, painful process to get our eldest son assessed under the EHCP with our local authority. This had been a slow process, (often outside of the statutory milestones), with poor communication and little understanding of how we would get to the right outcome for our child. Whilst we had better experience with some of the individual practitioners who assessed our child, we also had frustrating experiences including an educational psychologist who did not actually see our child in person.

This resulted in an assessment and initial plan where we simply did not have any guidance as to what the right educational placement was and significant delays in even naming a placement even after most children already had their school places decided. Richard was a recommendation from the manager of the special needs playschool our child had been attending, and was an excellent one. He quickly assessed the situation, patiently and cogently set out our options and took us through the process of issuing a pre-action letter to the local authority to force them to name a placement.

Richard then took us through the process of both appealing against the placement named by the local authority, which was blatantly inappropriate, and into the tribunal process. He was diligent, patient with us and excellent at taking us through the process step by step. He was also excellent at dealing with the local authority and identifying when they were pushing boundaries and when to push back.

As a result of Richards and Bethans input, we were able to get the right assessments done independently, identify the right placement and get our child into an excellent specialist school that is already benefiting our son. Was it cheap? Probably not, although I suspect you could spend a lot more as well. But, more importantly, was it good value for money? Completely. Whilst we are lucky we can afford to do so, I fully believe that we would not have been able to achieve the outcome we did without Richard and his team, and our son would not have the placement and package of care that he did. Highly recommended.

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Dena

Dena

August 16, 2022

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Dena

I was warned that my costs could be up to £12,000 but my total costs eventually exceeded £20,000. Wish I'd spent the money on buying in the provision that my child needs.

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SEN Legal Limited are accredited by

accreditation

About this branch

Description

We remain one of the most successful practices in this area of law and are extremely proud of our constant success rate of over 90% for the last decade. We do not perform any other type of law (property, wills, etc) so you can be reassured all of our Solicitors are expert in what they do. Many of our team also have personal experience of SEN and Disability so can understand your difficulties on a personal and professional level. SEN Legal was in fact set up by our Founder, Melinda Nettleton after struggling to obtain support for her own son who has special educational needs, 20 years ago. We run approximately 200 Appeals to the SEND Tribunal every year. These vary from Refusal to Assess appeals, to obtaining ABA provision in a mainstream school, to obtaining very expensive independent specialist placements. We act on behalf of parents, grandparents, guardians, carers and the young person against Local Authorities (LA) and occasionally Universities and Independent Schools to resolve whatever problem you have, big or small.

Regulated by

Solicitors Regulation Authority

Legal services

Personal areas of law

  • Consumer
    • Litigation - Breach of contract
    • Litigation Law
    • NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding
  • Education
    • Education
  • Human rights
    • Judicial review
  • Welfare & Benefits
    • Mental Health
    • Mental Health - Court of protection