Surely this is part of solicitors job?

[Confused500]

Please enlighten me if I am wrong, but AIBU to think that it is part of our solicitors job(we are selling home) , to chase the buyers solicitors, if they have not heard back after sending responses to enquiries? One of the queries was about completing before stamp duty changes, which has obviously happened now…
I have seen an email he has sent to the estate agent, which is involved further up the chain, saying that they haven’t heard back yet from the buyers solicitor and presume that she (EA) will be doing the chasing

YABU- this is not what the solicitors are supposed to do

YANBU- you are paying them for a service, and they should be doing this

If this is actually the solicitor’s fee, you should be getting a better service. If you are including all the amounts the solicitor has to pass on to other parties (which I notice people often do), chances are the solicitor (who may not actually be a solicitor - many firms have multiple unqualified staff with one supervisor) has a huge number of files and simply doesn’t have the time to deal with it.

You should have a breakdown somewhere.

As a PP says, conveyancing these days is usually low cost, high volume and mostly you get what you pay for.

That would require people instructing them to be willing to pay a reasonable amount for their time.

Instead, they usually go for the lowest quote which means a huge number of files per fee earner and then expect Rolls Royce service anyway.

I once worked for a conveyancing factory and I have never dealt with so much abuse. I moved over to the criminal department - such a relief to deal only have to deal with drug dealers and thieves. They were so much politer and easier to work with.

It's always been the estate agents job to do the majority of the chasing. Ours were brilliant last time we bought.

Correct. A lot of "conveyancers" aren't solicitors.

Well, if it is a private sale then you have to do the chasing by asking the buyer to chase their solicitor.

That is what we did when we sold privately.

You aren’t unreasonable but in my experience they don’t do this on any kind of routine and so you have to mush them along if you want your conveyancing to take a sensible amount of time

I instruct solicitors a lot, both in a personal capacity, as a trustee and at work.

That's not my experience at all. Perhaps you are picking badly /not giving clear instructions

If you are doing a private sale then you need to ask your solicitor what they are waiting on and then let the buyer know and get them to chase.

when I sold my house as a private sale me and my buyer communicated every week to let the other one know where we were at. You need to not answer questions yourself, but just our solicitor is waiting on xyz, can you ask where that is.

Love this post @CandidHedgehog you've made me laugh!

To those of you who are conveyancing solicitors - whose job is it to chase up tardy communications that are putting the deal at risk?

I sold a flat in London in 2021. We used the same solicitor as we had to buy it. Well same firm, different person as original had resigned.
When we put it on the market I sent them an email with about 10 documents that they had sent us re lease, water, various other bits and pieces. Day before exchange they were emailing saying they hadn't got various documents that the buyers wanted. I emailed them back each time attaching my email of 8 months earlier referring to each document. It was awful. I think the work was being dumped on a paralegal and she was overwhelmed but that's not my problem.

It probably makes some sense to leave it with the estate agents, because the solicitor isn't allowed to contact the vendors direct but the reality is that that is generally the quickest way to make things happen - the vendor's solicitors may well ignore other solicitors but will have to pay attention to what the client wants, particularly if the client is threatening to withdraw instructions or make an official complaint. Also estate agents are generally very motivated to speed things up as their commission depends on the transaction being completed.

I find it so.annoying that people pussy foot around "professionals" you are paying them good money to provide a service. That's all. They work for you. Without you they go hungry.

I had an extension built a few years ago, the architect was very very slow, missed deadlines...I told him simply I wasn't going to pay him as he hadn't completed the contract and that I had employed someone else. He wasn't happy, I replied that I had chased him 5 times and would happily see him in court.

they ain't god, there's lots of competition out there now, gone of the days of there being only one or two solicitors in town and everyone using them.

The problem with solicitors is they assume that because they are working in the law, no-one will be brave enough to sue them. Gives them carte blanche to be as useless as they like. They are in a sellers' market.

Pay by the hour then. If you are having fixed price work done of course it won’t include chasing which isn’t constructive work. What does a conveyancer charge these days - £1500? That’s not many hours to do the actual work that needs doing.

I'm sure most of them don't have much choice but to take the work.

I certainly didn't get much choice as a junior lawyer, even though I never did conveyancing work.

Are you aware that routine law is done by paralegals on minimum wage salaries. So you get the service you would get from any other extemely low paid person who probably has a law degree but little training being paid less than £12 per hour. If you want a better service pay the thousands .

I’d say it depends!
Your solicitor works for YOU, not the buyer or the EA.
If the ‘pressure point’ e.g. completing before tax changes came from the buyer, and you weren’t bothered about it (or even perhaps wanted a slower process), then your solicitor would be right to not chase.

If you have said you want things done asap, then they absolutely should be chasing.

It’s all about controlling the process so that it works best for you, the client.

Increasingly people who do conveyancing need to be qualified. Certainly if you’re working for a non-conveyancing factory set up. There’s nothing wrong with a licensed conveyancers firm so long as it’s a small one.

As for not caring about being sued 😆 I audit residential property files now. There’s a huge amount of regulation to comply with.

I recently sold my late mother's house. I used the conveyancers recommended by the estate agent.

What an utter disaster. Lost files that I took to their premises and had a receipt for. An app that showed my actions completed but EA chasing ME on behalf of buyer as my conveyancer hadn't done anything with it.

To top it off on the day of completion I had the EA call chasing me as I'd not agreed to complete, in person. Couldn't get in touch with the conveyancers so I emailed a response to every email chain I had from them which resulted in the discovery of a gdpr breach as I found myself being bombarded by emails from pretty much everyone involved in the short chain.

When it did complete 4 LONG days later I received the bill which showed duplicate charges, as well as charges for 'services' that weren't listed on their T&C's.

I'm still awaiting communication about my complaint and am prepared to escalate to the ombudsman

Perhaps - but unlikely - I also use them a lot for my businesses, home, and two charities I'm involved in - not replying from a small pool - and sometimes it only becomes clear years later when you have to fight a clause in a contract that's written badly....