Solicitor stalling - is this normal?

[Nextdoor55]

We have an important letter we've agreed with a solicitor to write & send out, this has a deadline of needing to be received by other party by next Wednesday, solicitor keeps giving us deadlines "I'll have it to you by this evening" etc etc, but we've not had the draft yet. 4 time's now she's said she'll get me this draft. Nothing. It's been 3 weeks now.

It's an incredibly stressful situation for me & I've said how the delay & broken agreements have been making things worse.

Royal mail is unreliable where we are & I'm getting more stressed by the day knowing that you really need at least 4 days to make sure the post gets there. The last time we spoke she was going to send it to me via email by tomorrow. I'm now suspecting she's flaky & doesn't do what she says. I don't now know what to do.
It gives the impression it's a rookie chaotic office, but I cannot stand this feeling that she's not actually going to complete the letter in time.

I did ask another local solicitor but no-one has the time now to look at everything so that's not realistic.
What to do?

I saw your post about your solicitor dragging their heels, and I totally get how frustrating that can be. Sometimes these legal processes can feel like they're moving at a snail's pace, but it might just be a case of them making sure all their ducks are in a row. However, if you're feeling like things are a bit too sluggish, it might be worth touching base with them to see if there's anything you can do to light a fire under them.

I came across this article that could be helpful in case you need some guidance on navigating these legal waters: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/6-keys-to-selecting-a-whistleblower-1291783/ . It offers some great tips on finding the right legal support, which might help you spot if there are any red flags in your current situation.

They've finally sent the draft letter! It's a good one & worth waiting for. However do you happen to know - the other party isn't represented but we think they should be (I know we can't insist on this) but solicitor has said that correspondence must be in writing & directed to them. We don't want this because it's a cease & desist letter & because if other party does start communicating with our solicitor that'll rack up our bill. I mean we don't want to hear anything else from them unless it's like a formal way of resolving the issue like mediation. Can we tell our solicitor not to accept anything other than formal communication from a professional or would we need to end the contract with solicitor?

I’m afraid you can’t do that. If you have a solicitor representing you, all correspondence from the other party needs to go to them and not you.

You can of course dis instruct your solicitor so all correspondence is sent to you instead. Though that will get messy if you are going to then ask them to act for you again at a later point. If you just want to pay for someone to send specific letters/do specific actions and you do the majority of correspondence/prep, have you thought about instructing a direct access barrister instead?

Spoke to solicitor today who said that they can either ignore any correspondence or send directly to us, they reassured us that they don't have to respond and are happy to be reintroduced to the case should we need it. Fingers crossed that we don't need to (we are looking at moving anyway so will need them for that at least!)