The Dodgy Solicitor Playbook: 7 Tricks Legal Teams Use to Silence Tenants (And How to Fight Back)

“Disclaimer:Tenant Support UK is not a law firm and does not provide regulated legal advice. All content on this website is for general informational purposes only, based on publicly available legal guidance and personal experience. If you need legal advice tailored to your situation, please consult a qualified solicitor or a trusted housing advice service.“

Let’s be honest. Some solicitors (not all of them) aren’t defending clients, they’re defending chaos. At Tenant Support UK, we’re not solicitors (we say that often, loudly, and proudly), but frankly, we do a better job than some who are. When you’re knee-deep in rent receipts, WhatsApp threats, and endless ignored emails, the last thing you need is a snarky solicitor playing word games while dodging the truth.

Welcome to the real playbook.

Here’s how the sharp suits (some of them) try to psych you out, wear you down, and keep you out of court and why their tricks are crumbling faster than a Section 21 served with no EPC.

Tactic 1: ‘Excessive Correspondence’ Gaslighting
Translation: “Stop pointing out our client’s mess.”

You send three emails in two weeks asking why you were illegally threatened with eviction, and suddenly you’re labelled excessive.

Apparently, highlighting lies and discrepancies now comes with a penalty fee. This tactic is all about painting you as unreasonable so the court ignores the real issue.

Ironically, the actual problem’s never the number of emails, it’s the solicitor’s inability to answer a single one properly.

Tactic 2: The Magic Phrase “We Advise You to Seek Independent Legal Advice”
What they mean: “We’re hoping you’ll get stuck in a three-month Shelter callback queue.”

This line is solicitor bingo.

They use it when your email hits a nerve. It’s not about helping you. It’s a polite way of saying “please shut up”.

But at Tenant Support UK, we see this as a badge of honour. It means they’ve run out of excuses.

Tactic 3: Vanishing Act – “Who is Frankie the Freak ?….Never heard of it.”
Despite managing everything from moldy walls to forced evictions, suddenly “Frankie the Freak” disappears like Houdini.

If you’ve got 200 messages from one person telling you to leave, refusing repairs, and ignoring council requests, you’d expect them to be named in the claim or at least aknowledged, at the very least.

But nope.

They’ve enter the “ghost protocol.” Apparently, legal memory loss is contagious.

Tactic 4: ‘Kind Regards’ but Cold as Ice.
This one’s subtle but deadly.

Every reply is so stripped of humanity, you wonder if it was written by ChatGPT on sedatives.

They’ll ignore emotional context, skip over human distress, and stick to copy-pasted law school templates.

You’re not a person, you’re a file number. That’s how they keep you dehumanised. It’s intentional, and it’s cheap.

Tactic 5: The Gospel of “No Merit”
They deny everything. They admit nothing. And if all else fails, they chant: “You have no merit.”

Even when your evidence folder is fatter than a council’s disrepair backlog, they’ll keep saying it.

The aim? Undermine your confidence.

The truth?

They’re trying to scare you off before your evidence is scrutinised.

Spoiler alert: courts like facts. At Tenant Support UK we are very, very good at keeping receipts and records.

Tactic 6: The Silent Treatment Strategy
Ghosting: not just for Tinder.

If You serve a Letter Before Action, wait patiently, send a gentle reminder… and then? Silence.

But make one public post or send a link to your tribunal submission and suddenly they’re typing faster than ever.

The silence is meant to buy time and frustrate you into abandoning your claim.

Don’t. The silence is their weakness, not yours.

Tactic 7: The Passive Blame Game
Suddenly, nobody has responsibility. The agents were “just following instructions,” the landlord “had no idea,” the legal rep “wasn’t aware.”

It’s a domino chain of deniability.

But here’s the thing: you don’t need a badge to see the pattern. If they all shared the rent, managed the repairs, signed off the Section 21, and sent the threatening WhatsApps, then they’re all in the same game.

And the tribunal isn’t blind.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Wait… this is exactly what’s happening to me,” you’re not alone.

At Tenant Support UK, we’re not afraid of cold emails, courtroom jargon, or solicitors who confuse silence with strategy. We see their tricks. We break them down.

We teach tenants how to fight back with facts, not fear.

While many solicitors might have earned law degrees the hard way, it appears that some of them just found their law degree inside a Kinder Egg or an Easter Egg.

We’ve got the Human Factor, Knowledge and a very long memory.

The Toolbox: 9 Ways to Fight Back Without Moving to Mars