The start to the case was a little rocky with Elizabeth Browne who was very junior and not attentive at all, eventually we were assigned to Mathhew McConville.

McConville has a huge ego which we hoped would work in our favour. Sadly after many months it became apparent that he’s not as good as he thinks he is. We suspect that someone else junior had been working on our case. This would explain why when we spoke to him he was pretty uninformed and in email he never really did answer *all* the questions. He left us wondering if he knew what was going on at all.

As time went on, the delays grew and periods between contact lengthened. Until one day he contacted us blaming the court for allocating us to the small claims track and now being outside the terms of our insurance.

This is what we think has happened: Matthew McConville failed to notice that our defendant had in fact deregistered from companies’ house and in effect he’d allowed our case to fall apart. He then filed with the court at a figure less than ten thousand instead of the fifteen we discussed in full knowledge that the court would allocate to small claims. If this is true, then he has manipulated the situation to separate themselves from the case. We later found out that he’d received contact from the defendant saying they were going to dissolve their company to avoid the claim and McConville did nothing about it. His negligence allowed our defendant to dissolve, and we believe that when he discovered this he put into effect a plan to cover up for his management failure.

We then tried to get access to our case file which they refused to provide. Another hint that something was wrong , they obviously didn’t want us to know what was in the file. After two years and an ICO investigation it was determined that Irving’s Law had failed to service and access request, (provide the file) and had falsified the evidence that claimed they’d already serviced it. Another six months on the legal ombudsman found several service failings, more subterfuge in the form of tampered barristers reports to purport that we had no claim anyway contradicting earlier documents that supported that we did.

We've since found out following an independent review that they followed the wrong pre-action protocol. Another example of poor judgement and attention to proper management.

The bottom line is, don’t trust this company, they will makeup what ever suits them to talk their way out of their responsibility. We believe they have fabricated documents in their favor to hide the true facts of their management.

They are the old adage of ambulance chasers and when things go wrong, they put more effort in trying to hide their incompetence than managing the claim in the first place. They are poor examples of the profession. In our experience Mathew McConville’s ego is far bigger than his capabilities. His SRA values are of no importance to him. Ian Kyle is the same and will tell any lie to talk his way out of his responsibilities. In our opinion He’s no better than a backstreet car salesman trying to shift a questionable motor.

Avoid Irving’s. Obviously, this is our opinion and experience, if you use this company, record every phone call and make copies of everything you send to them as in our experience they lose evidence and will make up untruths to cover their backs.


They certainly have not earned the 5 star rating they purport to have.