Are you inadvertently giving Legal Advice as a Builder (Big Mistake!!)

A client came to me recently in the middle of a dispute with their insurer. The insurer had offered a settlement, and the alternative was to have the insurer rectify the work. Which way should they go? It's a common conundrum, and they wanted my view on what they should do.

Here's roughly what I told them.

We can't give legal advice, so we can't tell you which option is best. What we can do is inspect, review the proposed solutions and give you our feedback on them. We can also tell you what we would do to rectify the problem, and give you a budget for that rectification. We're happy to do that, but we'd need to inspect the back of the wall with that specific aim in mind.

What we can say, from our experience and in a practical sense, is that it will be a lot easier for one head contractor to manage the whole rectification and build. One point of responsibility, one consolidated contract. That makes a lot of sense to us, but it's based on our experience, not on law.

The problem that avoids is ambiguous responsibility. One contractor rectifies one side of the wall, another does the other side, and then the wall gets wet. Whose problem is it to solve?

I can tell you what I'd do. I can't tell you what you should do.

Take the settlement or make them fix it? That's a question about contractual exposure, warranty, and who carries the loss if it goes wrong again. It's not a building question.

A licensed builder's opinion on buildability, sequencing, cost and risk is worth a great deal, and it's exactly what the licence stands behind. But answer the settlement question and you've stepped into advice you aren't licensed or insured to give. If the client relies on it and it goes badly, that reliance is what comes back at you. Professional indemnity cover generally responds to the services you're qualified to provide, not the ones you strayed into.

Being clear about where your competence ends isn't a hedge. It's the duty. The unhelpful version is going quiet, or hiding behind "get legal advice." The useful version is to say plainly what you can't do, then give everything you can: a real recommendation, your reasoning, and a number.