To ask you if you think it’s time there was more robust regulation for conveyances?

[Bunnyfuller]

Posting for a wide audience 🙃

Morning all,

I’m waking up to another day of chasing our solicitor around our sale/purchase. From my perspective it seems the Conveyancing process, and delays and poor service in this area seems to be not only the root cause of this being so stressful, but from previous experience it also seems to be the cause of many chains collapsing.

I’ve had enough. Whilst there is always a Complaints procedure to follow, I just don’t want to have to use it to get acceptable service for something that isn’t cheap. This is the second time I have known my buyers and we’re in touch, and can already see the gaslighting going on from both sides.

Does anyone agree?

Will you share your story here?

Do you have any suggestions for the wording of a petition to put to government around greater transparency and accountability, with penalties from the Law Society for unreasonable and unsubstantiated delays Eg searches not in from other party’s solicitor for example but actually they are and yours just hasn’t looked at them.

Looking forward to hearing from you, and your support In publicising this if it’s a goer.

Law is already a highly regulated profession with clear structures for making complaints. You can also make a complaint using the firm’s internal process.

YANBU to be annoyed about bad service and you should expect better, but I think the remedy already exists. I would make a complaint to your CRP and if that doesn’t resolve it, complain to the law society.

It would be better to focus on making the whole process more simple. I work in conveyancing. It's a drawn out, mostly pointless imo, process. Add into that that conveyancers tend to be hugely over worked. It is an incredibly stressful job no matter what you may think. There needs to be a limit as to how many files they can work on at any one time otherwise you end up with this problem.

Trust me, it's not done for shits and giggles. I don't want to deal with you either for any longer than I have to but when you've got over 150 cases on your desk and every one of them wants to move yesterday it can take time. Add into that that you then have to go through a lot of processes that most people at (checking deeds from 100 years ago etc ...) It's an ancient process that needs to be simplified but that can only happen through the law and better regulations on firms as to how they treat their staff and manage workloads rather than individual conveyancers.

Basically modernise the process, scrap most of it and don't overwork staff and 99% of problems in this field would be rectified.

Generally speaking so not specifically speaking of the OP but there seems a lot of experts on how industries/businesses should run from people who don't work in them and also there is a difference in a genuine situation that needs a complaint and 'i am not getting what I want so I will complain' even if what the person wants is not possible

A lot of the frustration would be avoided if they were upfront about how long things should take. When I bought my home I made the mistake of using the conveyancer recommended by the estate agent, which was a total disaster. First time buyer, buying a vacant property, mortgage agreed within two weeks, seller provided all the info straight away. Still took five months because the conveyancer wouldn't do anything until you phoned them three times. Even on the day I finally completed, they didn't bother to push the button to transfer everything until I'd rung them up twice. (Not early either, midday and 3pm!)

There's so little profit in conveyancing for solicitors, I think any more regulation will just drive most of them to stop offering it and it will be left to licensed conveyancers or paralegals with one overseeing solicitor working for mortgage companies to do.

Much of the reason for delays is due to the extensive regulation of it anyway - make one mistake and yiur firm is liable to massive compensation and you could be struck off or at least seriously damage your career.

The conveyancing part, as opposed to the searches and estate agency fees, is usually so badly paid it's probably a loss leader, for bringing in future business through estate agency, wills, probate, etc. A lot of it involves endless chasing up of the other side by phone, missing them and then calling back, and form filling. It uses up a lot of time but just isn't very remunerative.

Then there's all sorts of problems which can appear, such as a prescriptive title needing insurance, or no proper right of access, which you really don't want to mess up because if it's done wrongly, you could end up not owning the land you paid for, or no vehicular access to your house!

So YABU - be careful what you wish for OP.

There's so little profit in conveyancing for solicitors, I think any more regulation will just drive most of them to stop offering it and it will be left to licensed conveyancers or paralegals with one overseeing solicitor working for mortgage companies to do

I've actually never experienced this. I work in conveyancing and have for a long time. It is the most profitable department we have (and we are a multi law firm).

However, this comes back to overworking like I said in my post. It's profitable because there is so much work, not because it's expensive. It's actually the cheapest area of law there is in terms of the fee the client pays and how long the matter is worked on. Try seeing a divorce solicitor for an average of £500 plus VAT and being able to contact them whenever you want via email, phone, letter etc... For the next two months.

What conveyancers need is a smaller case load in order to give the service that OP wants. That isn't the system many law firms have in place right now unfortunately. If conveyancers had a workable case load, the fees would probably be a lot more expensive to make up the difference.

Basically modernise the process, scrap most of it and don't overwork staff and 99% of problems in this field would be rectified.

At the same time creating more problems when the work is cut out!

We were once buying a house but nothing much seemed to be happening. Driving by the house we saw that they were having new windows installed! Phoning the agent we were told they had decided not to sell and our solicitor had been informed a couple of weeks earlier. He tried to bill us for a lot of money until we contacted the Law Society about his negligence.

I really appreciate the comments from the conveyances here, and the problems you cite are pretty much as I already knew.

But with greater transparency and accountability those root causes would have to be addressed - not taking on more cases that can be managed effectively, a flagging system to force updates to the client.

I’m really interested to hear from vendors and sellers and their experiences. I don’t claim to know how to fix it (only know the penalties we incur as an FE provider within the police, and the measures we have to put in place.

We have one example here of the solicitor not updating something important.

My examples: taking over a month to send out draft contracts despite all documentation completed within 2 days of instruction
A 3 hour gap between our buyer’ completion and getting the ok to the house we were buying - while I was stood next to the home owners on the phone to their solicitor and having been texted by our buyer
Searches not requested after 6 weeks of having the money
Solicitors insisting on snail mail for all correspondence
Sales falling through because solicitor not working to agreed timeline, and not giving rationales why (not me, this is from an estate agent friend, current issues).
Regardless of the causes, which are down to the industry to address, there have to be some changes. I agree much of the process itself is badly out of date, but I’m paying nearly 2k for a sale and purchase, not £500.

I’m yet to meet a solicitor who is hard up so maybe a shake up will force them to structure things better for the paralegals etc who do all the legwork.

I'm not saying that there aren't issues or that these problems don't exist. But the reasons why.

A solicitor / conveyancer doesn't want to deal with complaining clients for months on end. You won't usually get someone who just doesn't respond because they are lazy or cba. It is a real problem in this industry, being signed off with stress, being put on antidepressants etc... Are common place in every single conveyancing department I've ever worked in.

The problems occur (in the main, you'll obviously get one or two piss takers like in any job) from a process that is not fit for purpose in the 21st century but conveyancers are forced to abide by anyway and firms taking on more work than their staff can handle.

Complain to the law society if you have a problem by all means. My point is, the issues in this industry go much further than conveyancers = shit.

Firms need to be held accountable I agree... for overworking their staff to the point they are unable to provide a decent service.

I've known many really very good solicitors who are fantastic at their jobs but have thrown in the towel because they are sick of their names getting smeared because they simply cannot keep up with the expectations having too many cases bring.

As an employee, you don't get to decide not to take on as many cases. They are distributed by your employer. It's common place to get over 6 new matters a day just turning up on your desk.

Complain yes, but do it about the real problem which is the greed at the top of the firm, not the individual employees.

And if you want the kind of service you should expect, you need to be prepared to pay for it. Conveyancing on the whole is not expensive when you compare it with other areas of law, it's incredibly cheap but there is a reason for that as I've said. They make the profit from cramming as much work in as possible. If you want a quick easy transaction where you can get hold of your solicitor whenever you want or have a query etc etc then be prepared for much higher fees.

I think a lot of the problems stem from the fact that they won't use modern means of communication. I have used excellent law firms for conveyancing - and they were excellent because they used email and answered me the same day.

There are still lawyers who want to use fax and/or a quill pen.

I know it's underpaid in the conveyancing factories. But some firms make it work. And there is no way that I would get away with providing the poor service in my area of law that conveyancers get away with.

I think most conveyancers, that I have worked with anyway, would really appreciate a complaint to management focussing on their failings (i.e. taking on more work than they can handle) rather than the individual person who probably just doesn't have enough time to deal with you as efficiently as you require.

It's easy for management to place the blame on the employee when the client is doing that too. Place it on the people who make the rules/take on too much work and it's much more difficult for them to excuse themselves out of it or not address the problem properly. If a firm gets tonnes of complaints about individual staff not replying to this email or not doing X quick enough, they will just pass the blame along and nothing will change. If they receive tonnes of emails about them not providing a good service because they are quite clearly too busy and taking on more than they can handle... Well they may just have to look at that.

And I can tell you most conveyancing employees would be really happy to see a complaint come in like that because it puts the blame where it actually lies 9 times out of 10.

and answered me the same day

Again, this all comes down to workload. You won't have time to answer everyone the same day when you're getting 100s of emails from different clients all asking you to look into this or speak to that person or advise them on X and Y.

I use email almost exclusively unless there is something I have to send by post. It's still not always possible for me to just respond to every single person in the same day. I get over 100 emails a day sometimes and they are usually things that I have to go away and look into, not just a quick yes or no.

I'm yet to meet a solicitor who is hard up

Are you dealing with big firms? I'm related to a solicitor who runs a very small firm, trust me that he is not wealthy and works very hard.

The process in Scotland seems to be much better, my mother was shocked how long it took our house purchase in England to go through compared to purchases at home!

I'm yet to meet a solicitor who is hard up

Agree, a lot of conveyancers aren't actually solicitors for a start. And the average wage for a qualified experienced conveyancer is about 25k, the starting salary is about 16-19k. It's not a career for someone who expects to be well off in my experience, not unless you reach the top in a large firm.

Agree with PenCreed above I meant. Scotland has a much better system.

I’m a solicitor and used to specialise in property litigation - often dealing with professional negligence claims in property transactions gone wrong. There is massive scope for messing up in conveyancing, especially when many buyers want to pay peanuts and have everything done yesterday. Estate agents charge a ridiculous amount in comparison for a job that needs few qualifications and little skill.

I’m not saying your complaints are not valid, but it’s not an easy job. If you’re not happy then check the letter of engagement you should have received when instructing them - that should set out what to do.

I hope it all goes through soon without too many headaches.

I’ve done commercial conveyancing in Scotland. It’s a long drawn out process. You are not the only client and this causes delays as everyone need exactly the same thing as you. I feel like some people think we were only dealing with their one account (how I wish) . There may be a delay of 3 hours as the conveyancer may be in the middle of something else. Locates your file,familiarises themselves with it as there are 25 settlements on the go and ensures everything is where it needs to be..., it’s a difficult process. God how amazing it is when one of the settlements is done and fucks off!