What to expect from conveyancer?

[ShoeShineShirley]

I posted this in property but thought it might go down better here.

I would be really grateful for some wisdom and experience on this one. We're in the process of buying a new property. Our solicitor tends to just ping us documents across, with no explanation. She did put together a report following the searches, but it was clearly mostly generic and difficult to understand. There was a key bit of info hidden in there too that should have been flagged to us imo.

My question is, should she be taking the time to explain key points when she sends things over or is acting like a go-between the standard service? I'm wondering why I'm paying legal fees when I'm left to try to decipher everything myself - which is dangerous as I lack any legal knowledge!

Headline says Conveyancer but you then refer to a Solicitor.

What does the outfit you're working with describe themselves as?

Apologies, she's a conveyancer.

Conveyancer or solicitor doesn't make much of a difference in my experience. We used both and never got any real interactions with them, although the conveyancer was worst as it was a very large company and most of emails came'from their admin. At least with the local solicitor we were talking to the qualified person.

Sorry I can't really help but my experience was the same. They only provided explanations when we asked for things, and we actually got good advice from them on the phone once. But nothing was proactive. I expect that if something had been a game changer they would have flagged it.

You should know what to expect by looking in the engagement letter they will have sent you. That should set out service standards.

It also partly depends on the price you've been quoted. Whilst there are certain minimum service standards (to avoid you suing them or making a complaint) this might be the reason they were possibly the cheapest quote (I'm just guessing here). You don't get to be cheap without cutting corners.

I'll give you an example. It takes time to go through a title to a property and produce a bespoke report explaining in detail various features of the title. The more you pay the more detailed that report is going to be. The less you pay the less detail it will contain. Provided it contains sufficient detail they will have done what you pay them to do. It's like buying a new car. You need to know it's safe and it works, but if you want all the high end features, or for it to go faster, then you may need to pay more.