Can you tell me about your awful solicitor experiences to make me feel a bit better?

[waytheleaveswork]

Went into sign paperwork on a new flat today. Female solicitor who has done all the work has been fab, but was on holiday this week.

Male solicitor clearly hadn't opened my file before my 12pm appointment. He noticed some forms were missing - which he would have spotted before I came in if he had bothered to read the first page. Then proceeded to explain that because it was leasehold, I'd struggle to sell in 30 years time 'but hopefully you wouldn't still be living there'. He was just a totally arrogant, unprofessional, incompetent arse weasel.

When he told me I'd been asked to come in too soon, I just said OK and left.

I don't want to complain - there's no point. I just feel so insignificant and disappointed. I was bought out of my previous home by ex-DH. I know this flat isn't amazing, but I was excited about my next chapter. I have dealt with many solicitors over the past 4 years and, without exception, the women have been excellent and the men shite.

I'd love some solicitor horror stories to cheer me up.

@JoJothesquirrel

I exchanged on the first day of locks so things were “tense” had to find a new mover at the last gasp etc. After the money was transferred the solicitor called I assumed to check it had a arrived. He said the buyers wanted 400 for a new boiler. I said the boiler was 5 years into a 10 year guarantee so tough. He came back the next day saying the boiler was 20 years old. Then started a week of backward and forward where I said I wasn’t giving them £400 and the lawyer coming back with reasons why I should. Eventually I said get them to send a pic of the boiler and he said they had already had it ripped out and hadn’t had a boiler for 6 weeks cause they were waiting for £400. Eventually I wrote and emailing saying as far as I was concerned this matter was closed, please do not contact me again about this issue. Return email said “what should I tell the buyers?” I just resent my email in bold, haven’t heard back I assume it’s sorted.

What sort of boiler only costs £400?!

@NeedToKnow101 if your property is registered at the Land Registry and they scanned and stored all the relevant documents and conveyances at registration your solicitor can order official copies.

My house deeds were destroyed upon registration (not by me, I would have liked to keep them).

@zaffa I brought this up, he thought it might only be my 1/2 of the boiler. It was so clear that because he wasn’t getting a cut of the money and he’d already been paid he was just passing on the messages Without thinking at all. It was in the survey that the boiler was whatever brand and had the warranty. Whole thing was really annoying.

[quote Jimdandy]@NeedToKnow101 if your property is registered at the Land Registry and they scanned and stored all the relevant documents and conveyances at registration your solicitor can order official copies.

My house deeds were destroyed upon registration (not by me, I would have liked to keep them).[/quote]
@Jimdandy - thanks that's helpful, I think it's all in order then. Although the solicitor who arranged my mum's deed extension also did her Will.When I went to collect it his offices were literally covered in piles and piles of cardboard boxes, heaped on each other, with client documents in, even in the reception bit. That was a bit unnerving!

We bought a house that had a charge on it and as part of the usual procedure our solicitor asked for confirmation it would be cleared by the buyer on completion (or maybe exchange can't remember)

The other side's solicitor produced signed documents agreeing to this but the address was for a different property recently sold by the owner. They would not accept that we would actually like an agreement relating to the property we were buying on rather than a completely different one!! Then they said they couldn't get an agreement on relevant property signed because owners were abroad. DP told them we were walking away unless we had something by 10.30am the next day.. mysteriously enough it did appear clearly signed by the owner

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER We did the same thing; viewed in early May and moved in mid-August.

Received hefty sheaves of paperwork from solicitors for a house purchase and were told to read everything very carefully before signing. One phrase said something like 'This property sale is subject to CCJs'. We queried this (nicely) before signing that and were told that it was simply missing the 'not', and then were told in so many words we'd basically been pedantic!

DH now has a job that handles a lot of mortgages on accommodation that goes along with a position but changes hands fairly regularly. Some of these are now quite old and similar typos - just typos rather than cock ups - from the 80s and 90s are now rearing their heads in files and have given rise to mortgage dues that are thousands more than what the property can be worth now - so it does happen! Read carefully folks.

Turned up at the solicitors to find a new team of solicitors insitu. Secretarial staff at desks crying (I knew one of them). Someone had been cooking the books. Luckily we were not affected.

Our last conveyancing solicitor was dire. Countless mistakes and errors; however, her finest was failing to get us to sign a form needed in respect of our mortgage. Only realised when they would not release funds on completion. Forms signed, but we couldn’t move into our new home till 6 Pm (which was after she suggested she would be leaving the office at 5 so we would just have to find alternative accommodation if not completed by then).

Slightly off tangent, but worthy of a post on here I am sure. I was brought in to a leading law firm to assist with their clients' sale of a business in conjunction with their emigration overseas. A divorce was also in the wings and both spouses needed the deal to go through to draw a fuller line between them (both equal business owners). Nobody could understand why the wife was finding holes in the advice and presenting an unwillingness to proceed in the way that we were suggesting. To go with her approach would have resulted in significantly less money and the deal would have taken longer. Oddly, we had not seen the husband for several months, only the wife attended meetings but that was not unusual as she had been the driver and decision maker. We get close to completion of the deal and we do not hear from either wife or husband. The purchaser is understandably furious. The deal is off, things die down. A year later I read in the national press that husband is found buried in the local woods and time of death was some time before my last round of meetings with her. Wife is now doing a life sentence together with her lover. Never recovered a bean for my work.

I had one solicitor ask me to text him my bank details and another sent me the vendors personal details - bank account numbers and sort codes, passwords, forwarding addresses, dates of birth... the works

When I sold my house the buyers solicitor forgot to finish the paperwork off. This meant it remained in my name at land registry. I only found out several months later when the council found where I had moved to and started chasing me for council tax!! Only time I've technically owned a house without a mortgage

Did they bollocks @HelloCanYouHearMe.

@Pippapotomus

I once had my solicitor place my just signed paper work into a cardboard box with 'Crap' sharpied on the side of it.

That made me chuckle.

I’m afraid I am a solicitor and I’m very much enjoying this thread

We had a solicitor who was so slow (He took months to sort any of the paperwork out) we were going to lose our buyer. I basically went into his office - brushed straight last his secretary and said in no uncertain terms, that if he didn’t pull his finger out and do his job I would not be paying his bill.
He tried to argue but was shut up when I said that I had zero money in the bank until
the house was sold and if he missed this sale, then I would be remarketing it. This he would not get paid.
Funnily enough we finalised the sale the same week. He got paid.
Sold mother in laws flat - solicitor forgot to take their payment, DH pointed out their mistake straight away. The still argued we were wrong and they had in fact taken their payment from the proceeds. A year later we had a letter asking if we would consider paying them as due to THEIR administrative oversight, they forgot to take their bill from the proceeds of the sale.
We did pay - but made them wait another 6 months.

@MinnieMountain solicitors can act for both sides in the same way conveyancers can.

I went with my husband to discuss him adopting my eldest 2 kids since they were abandoned by their biological father and he hadn't been on the scene for almost a decade. Same firm who handled my divorce but a different solicitor since mine had left the firm.

Her exact words to me were "you made your bed and now you need to lie in it. Literally and metaphorically."

My younger child at the time was the result of forced marital sex (you can't take your own wife in my ex's opinion) so to say that to me literally broke me. I spent weeks in pieces over that.

Then the kicker was when she sent me a bill for almost £200 for the pleasure of being ridiculed and insulted by her. I emailed her and informed her at no point were we told there was a charge for the meeting and we had asked and been told the initial meeting was free and her reply was even more condescending by saying "oh it doesn't work like that."

I never responded after that and she never sent a follow up invoice so I think she took the hint she wasn't getting a penny.

If only she had taken the time to read my file before the meeting.

Told us the wrong information about stamp duty - that we had to pay the higher rate because I we owned a buy to let. However it was our main residence so wasn't true.

Found out the actual rules two weeks after the deadline to reclaim the overpayment from HMRC.

Over paid by £11,000.

I bought a flat last week and had an excellent solicitor, this is the second time I’ve used her. She did everything in 3 weeks, from offer being accepted to move in day. Fees were £800 plus outlays.

There are some good ones out there.

I basically went into his office - brushed straight last his secretary and said in no uncertain terms, that if he didn’t pull his finger out and do his job I would not be paying his bill.

Sure you did

The problem with conveyancing is its very competitive and it’s become a race to the bottom with fees. People don’t want quality,
they want what they perceive as value for money. So firms really rely on the quantity of work, use unqualified staff with one or two qualified staff who are overseeing things stepping in when the shit hits the fan.

People want to say they’re paying good money but really they don’t know what that is in the context of a law firm.

My firm charges around £750 legal fees for a conveyance which demands quite a lot of attention over the course of 6-8 weeks. It’s not much when you consider a solicitor and studied for 6 years and the firms overheads. Professional indemnity insurance for conveyancing lawyers is the most expensive of the profession.

On the sale of our old house there was a boundary issue which was never picked up by the original solicitors when we bought so we were dealing with old solicitors, new solicitors and buyers solicitors. Our solicitor was a fucking nightmare, the other two solicitors eventually phoned her boss to complain. She was obstructive, rude, patronising to us all. We were fucking paying her! Towards the end when it was nearly completed after being nudged the whole process by us all she actually said ‘Look xxxxx I’m getting sick of this. If you want to find another solicitor, I’m happy for that. I’ll send you the bill for what I’ve already done and send your file over to your new solicitor. She knew she had us over a barrel.

Fucking awful women.

@ZigZagPlant

Yep I did. And I would do it again. I really don’t care what you think is not a lot of money. When you really don’t have any money and are depending on a sale to go through despite it only being a small semi - and you have a cash buyer, you don’t expect your solicitor to take months over it.
I have zero respect for those that play fast and loose with other people’s money and futures. If he hadn’t got the time to deal with the sale - he should have said before agreeing to take it on.

This thread makes me very glad I'm a commercial property lawyer and not residential!

Saying that, I am buying and selling at the moment and whilst my own solicitor is fab, the other two solicitors in the chain are worse than useless.

Gosh I think people are being a bit harsh on conveyancers!! I’ve only done a 5 month stint in conveyancing when training but it’s a nightmare of a job and no way would I work as one.
Clients are understandably stressed, but conveyancing has one of the smallest profit margins (and is often a loss leader). So in order to make targets etc you have a huge caseload. Fridays are a nightmare- you can have four or five completions and a similar number of exchanges, all of which have to happen before the 3pm banking cut off.
Add in wanky estate agents who lie through the teeth and often are getting paid three or four times what you are, for basically no responsibility.
Everyone always shops around for the cheapest conveyancing meaning the bulk of the work is done by paralegals or trainees.

I hated the whole thing. So stressful.

(Although for a few weeks the bible went missing at work and we took swears on a copy of the OED wrapped in the bibles dust jacket)

Criminal matter, I was 18, numerous evidence, pre-sentencing report, good character references to obviate any possible sentence. My wonderful solicitor talked the Magistrates into convicting me, talked me out of an appeal, then charged me for the privilege. Fucking conviction still shows on my DBS checks 25+ years later. Twat.