A fruit picker whose employer withheld wages at the end of the season, a student in a shared house in Hales Place whose landlord has kept the deposit, a couple buying a listed cottage in Bridge, a lorry driver stopped on the A2 on the way to Dover: a solicitor's week in Canterbury takes in all of them. The city is small but serves a large corner of Kent, from the coast at Whitstable and Herne Bay to the farms and villages of the Stour valley and the North Downs, and its law firms are broad to match, most of them inside the city walls or just outside them.
A city with its own Crown Court
Few places of Canterbury's size keep a Crown Court. Serious criminal cases from across east Kent are tried at Canterbury Crown Court, which shares a building with the county court, so a defence solicitor and a parent at a children hearing may pass through the same doors. Less serious crime from the city and its villages goes before the magistrates' courts that cover east Kent, and employment claims from Canterbury workplaces are heard at the tribunal's hearing centre in Ashford or by video.
What Canterbury asks of its solicitors
Two universities set much of the rhythm. The University of Kent on the hill above the city and Canterbury Christ Church University in the centre fill thousands of rooms in shared houses, so landlord and tenant work, licensing and deposit disputes run all year. Tourism around the cathedral, the Marlowe Theatre and the high street supports hotels, restaurants and language schools with seasonal and part-time staff. Beyond the ring road the district is agricultural: orchards, hop gardens, vineyards and vegetable farms that rely on seasonal workers and generate employment, immigration, tenancy and succession work. The Channel ports at Dover and Folkestone and the lorry traffic on the A2 and M20 bring haulage businesses, customs disputes and motoring offences, and retirement to the coast keeps wills, probate and lasting powers of attorney busy.
Fees, legal aid and choosing a firm
Fixed fees are the rule in Canterbury for conveyancing, wills, powers of attorney, settlement agreements and uncontested divorce; disputes are charged by the hour. Legal aid remains for criminal defence, for family cases involving domestic abuse or care proceedings and for some housing and immigration matters, and few enough east Kent firms hold a contract that it pays to ask at the first call. Read whether you can get legal help for free before committing to private fees, and check home and motor insurance for legal expenses cover. Every firm listed here is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority; featured firms have also passed the site's verification.
Searching from Canterbury
The sector pages below take each area of law as it works in Canterbury, with the firms that practise it listed under each. To find a solicitor near a particular address, from Whitstable to Littlebourne, use the Canterbury search or the county-wide Kent search. Commuters still using a London firm can compare with the Best Solicitors in London page; the legal insights guides explain common problems in plain English.
