Solicitors conspire to drag out conveyancing

[SweetCruciferous]

AIBU to think solicitors deliberately eke out every step of the conveyancing process as a deliberate ploy to justify disproportionate fees for simple boilerplate admin tasks amounting to no more than a couple of days’ work?

This is my suspicion. Can anyone confirm this? Any heretic solicitors? AIBU?

It would be great if people would accept an update once a fortnight, or even once a week. But many want an update daily, sometimes twice daily, even when given timescales such as that their local search won't be back for 3 weeks.

If I email a client to say I've had their replies to enquiries, and I'll let them know when I've had the opportunity to review them, the first thing they'll ask is whether they're ok and can we exchange now. I then have to go back and say that I've not had the chance to review them (as per previous email), it will likely take a couple of hours to do that and draft a report, and I'd expect to get back to them in 2-4 days.

The most urgent things are always dealt with first and that will always be things that have exchanged and are about to complete, followed by things that are about ready to exchange. If I've got 6 or 7 exchanges/completions in a day, I won't have time to do much else, especially as we are short staffed at the moment and lenders are being a nightmare releasing funds. I certainly won't have time to spend 2 hours reviewing a contract pack or lease or checking replies to enquiries and drafting a title/contract report. So it gets pushed to the next day, when I've had another 200 emails and have got more completions/exchanges to get done.

If people paid proper fees for the amount of expertise and knowledge that goes into a property transaction, conveyancers wouldn't need to take on so many files to make it profitable.

It's all very well paying £300 for your conveyancing fees but if something goes wrong they won't be able to sort it out. It will be left to the actual property lawyers acting for someone else in the chain who will end up sorting it all out. Meanwhile, nothing gets done on their other files that day because they spend a whole day (or more) trying to sort the issue out.

@minionsrule - If you were selling, you should have completed a property information form which would have asked for copies of all the documents such as planning permissions, building regulations, boiler service reports etc. at the very outset. If there was anything missing the buyers solicitor would raise it as an enquiry. Similarly there may have been things revealed by the local search which you didn't realise would be relevant and which the buyers solicitor needed to request from yours.

If you were purchasing then it would have been your solicitor raising the queries to make sure your transaction is done properly.

You'd be surprised how many people don't disclose building work etc in the property info form and don't realise we'll either find out from the local search, or from the survey report or from the estate agents' sale particulars.

Put more information in, Don't assume people know the process. It sounds like you have a good idea of the typical questions .

We have had the replies to the enquiries. We now need to study these replies for any issues. We expect to have completed this in 2 weeks time. No matter what , we will be in touch then. Once any issues have been resolved the next stage will be....... At present we cannot give any timescales as it depends on the type and number of issues identified.

It won't stop the total idiots but should help overall

Yes we do that, plus sending out a flowchart with each stage and expected timescales at the start of each transaction which sets out what I do and what the other side's solicitors will do. I also try to drop clients an email if I haven't been in touch for a couple of weeks with a quick update. Many clients are fine with that, but it only takes a few who want constant updates to push everyone else's timescales out of whack. Like the client who called my mobile 15 times in the space of an hour when I was on a Zoom meeting, I'd even emailed to let him know I'd be unavailable for an hour. You'd be surprised how many people lose sense of what is appropriate/realistic because they're so stressed.

Not sure what the solution to it is - it's a stressful and emotional process for most people, one where they feel completely out of control and I do try to acknowledge that.

I did a bullet point list of what legal aid want as evidence earlier this year.

I think a flow chart with timescales would be a good idea. I Always TELL a client by e-mail and in a letter what happens next and when. Always. But a flow chart would be very useful.

@redcar2022 it has helped us, particularly for first time buyers who tend to need the most hand-holding as they don't have any experience of the process. It would probably help your matrimonial clients as most of them won't know the process at all.

I don't envy you though, I did family law as part of my training contract many years ago and I hated every minute of it, it was far, far more stressful than conveyancing. I genuinely don't know how you do it. I thought I was quite resilient but many of the matters brought me to tears.

I've had two good experiences, 17 years ago when I sold and bought a house, and 4 years ago when I sold my father's flat. Both were very efficient and got things done.

But as with all professions (see the threads about GPs) there are good, middling and awful representatives.

It is also true that conveyancing "factories" take more work on than they can handle.

@minionsrule

We had fixed price conveyancing as well but what I never understood was why they asked for something, it was supplied. Then they asked for something else, it was supplied.... and on and on. All of the things requested were required, not dependent, so why not list everything they needed up front? It dragged it all out for weeks longer than necessary

I had exactly this conversation with my daughter only yesterday. It’s so frustrating, and so unacceptable.

On the issue of docs being provided, this is ask for (all of them, every poss doc the buyer's sol could ask for) via the Property Information Form, TA6.

Sometimes the buyer's sol will ask for something else - trying to think...a chimney sweep invoice etc. But the PIF asks for all of those things form the off. It's unacceptable to send back a half filled document to me without any of the certificates included. I don't have time to check that my selling client has - god forbid - read the form I've sent to them...I receive it, get it scanned, and email it out.

Then comes the slew of "please provide the document referred to at 5.1 of the PIF" and so on.

I say this to my guys, send me everything - every single thing. You won't need it and I am happy to sort the wheat from the chaff.

So I don't accept your charge.

@redcar2022 Family sounds fucking atrocious at the moment. We always take the mick out of our family solicitor and how many (few) emails she has but each of her emails can take half a day to deal with. So difficult - then she gets people complaining about her bill and they don't realise that in emailing her long, wordy ranty emails they are clocking up her time.

We don't work for free, ffs.

YANBU OP the entire archaic shitshow is only perpetuated by the closed shop that is the law.

Wages are nowhere near what many people think they are, £30k is not enough money to wake feeling sick with stress about deadlines every single night, a case load of 200+ files and zero respect for the work you do

Bloody hell, you'd get more than that working as a benefit adviser for a local authority.

How is it a closed shop @DynamoKev? We all have professionals we rely on for all sorts of things.

@DynamoKev

YANBU OP the entire archaic shitshow is only perpetuated by the closed shop that is the law.

Well I guess if you mean people are qualified to practise law and you can't because you're not then I suppose it is a closed shop!?

Lately op, yes!
It has been a nightmare trying to get in contact with our solicitors and the solicitors for the bottom of our chain .
We are a short chain and us and our buyers have been contract ready since middle of November but as the bottom solicitor is un-contactable we’ve been held up.
Our solicitors have tried , our estate agents have tried and even the agency that we have used to make all this run smoothly have tried.
We are so close now and it’s bloody frustrating as they don’t reply to emails either!

@Lurcherloves

Oh my goodness I feel so sorry for conveyancing solicitors. Judging by this thread people have absolutely no insight into what is involved. In fact estate agents don’t understand and quite often lie. When I worked in conveyancing I remember an estate agent moaning at me because I had raised an issue about a doubling ground rent clause. The agents would let you buy that just to get their commission, a property you couldn’t sell and probably couldn’t afford in a few years once the doubling rents picked up and wouldn’t get a remortgage. But hey we just hold things up for the hell of it

In a lot of cases it’s not about “insight” it’s about a short bloody email back to say “I am still working on this and I’ll get back to you when I can” We have had radio silence for weeks and if you think they don’t get any sleep ,imagine what it’s like thinking you’ve come this far and that you may lose the house you’re desperate for because no one will get back to you !

I actually work in bridging finance and it never ceases to amaze that some solicitors can pull out all stops to complete a purchase within 48 hours... and then I have other cases where we are at the 7 month mark. Some solicitors are on the ball. Will request the vendors contract pack, order searches ( or opt to indemnify against searches) pretty must straight away. They are fabulously aggressive with chasing the vendors solicitors and on the ball when it comes to returning perfect completed packs back to my lenders. Some are never available by phone, ignore all emails.
Guess who gets it in the neck when the mortgage offer/survey reports expire? Usually me.
I don't think it's a conspiracy, but I do think some do not really get that they are in a key customer service role. I understand that we're in a weird market with a high volume of house purchases due to this stamp duty changes. We're all super busy. And just as much admin work can go into the underwriting side as what it does on the legal side. My view is that if mortgage companies are coping with the volume and still churning (for the most part) a good service then I don't see why it should be different for them?
In any case I tend to remember the shitty ones and always give my clients a list of the better ones.
Word of mouth is so very powerful.

I don't think they do for all the reasons above, I do however think the house buying process in England is nuts and could do with a blooming good shake up. We are buying atm and frankly it's been so long that sometimes I forget we are! I know Covid has impacted this situation but it took a ridiculous amount of time last time we bought too...

Obviously my post isn't directed at all solicitor and some cases are more complex then others. But it can be a big frustration.

It's worth asking your solicitor to lay out a map of the process for you with a potential time line so you know what to expect and when. And then you have transparency and realistic expectations.

If something doesn't happen at the time mapped out, then your solicitor might have a good excuse. Such as the vendors haven't provided something super important. Or the search providers are delayed.

Clear open transparent communication really makes all the difference. If you understood what was going on in the background you might have faith and be confident in the service your solicitor is providing.

My conveyancer was really good. Fixed fee, really prompt, and even stepped in several months after everything had gone through, when ExH was playing silly buggers, and dealt with it all for no extra charge. Definitely no dragging anything out. If I move again, I will be using the same firm.

Lol-ing at mortgage lenders giving good service. 1hr 59mins on the phone to HSBC last week, Monday and Tuesday, then they answered and put the phone down...weeks and weeks for offers...

Yup, they're doing well too.

@CheshireDing

Threads like this annoy me when people complain about the slow process but won’t spend the money, yet as someone else said it’s on what will probable be their biggest lifetime purchase.

They only want to spend £500 on the conveyancing but spend £3000 plus on the estate agents photos.

People won’t pay a decent rate for their conveyancing to be done, therefore conveyancers have to carry a high file count - think of around 120 files (could easily be more) with no assistant/secretary. Then the client emails on their file, then they ring, then they discuss something with the estate agent who then rings to discuss it, then the mortgage broker rings, sometimes some of those people can’t get hold of you on the phone so they send an email too! Then they complain that you haven’t replied quickly enough. Think about easily 70 plus emails per day (plus the ones sent over the weekend), plus the calls, plus trying to actually read documents - which takes longer because you keep getting interrupted and forget where you were up to on a Lease from 1908 in scrawly handwriting.

Forget starting early, working through lunch, finishing late, no overtime is paid.

But yet conveyancers are lazy arses 🧐

Sounds like a pretty normal day in most offices to be fair....

No way, our conveyancing solicitor is epic, he emailed me at 7am to answer a question this morning. He's thorough and works hard, worth every penny.

@Snackwarden the numerous threads in Property complaining how long mortgage offers are taking is evidence to the contrary.

Also echoing what @MinecraftMother said- help your conveyancer by filling in all your forms properly if you’re selling. If you don’t answer a question on the PIF, unless it’s obviously irrelevant (like the boundaries one when you’re selling a flat) you will get asked by the buyer’s conveyancer.

@MinnieMountain bridging finance within the specialist mortgage market isn't really within the same game.

Just this month, my colleagues and I have completed 62 mortgages across the board. Residential first and second charges, buy to lets, bridging and development loans... the shortest turnaround was 48 hours.:. Most bridges so complete with 2-4 weeks. The longest deal (Development finance) was 7 months.

It's swings and roundabouts.