Has anyone changed solicitor half way through buying process?

[MeMeMeow85]

Regretting my choice of solicitor. She seems experienced, works at a respected firm, but moves at the pace of a snail.

She’s not in the slightest bit proactive. Waits to tick all of the boxes before progressing to next stage. I’ve told her multiple times that we want to complete ASAP.

It is a simple purchase of a freehold house. The final search is due back this week and she still thinks it will take another month to exchange!! She’s had the mortgage offer for over 2 weeks already, so that’s not any delay.

Any thoughts on changing solicitors at this stage? Presumably I can ask her to send the current search results to new solicitor?

Better to go slowly and carefully, than quickly and negligently.

If all search results are not yet back it is unlikely that the solicitor will be able to finish raising enquiries with the solicitor acting for the seller.

It could easily take another few days for the final search to come back in. Then a day or two to review the results and raise the appropriate enquiries and send to the vendors solicitor. It may then take a week or so (perhaps longer) for satisfactory answers to be provided. They may be additional enquiries that need to be raised.

Then when all enquiries have been answered and all relevant documentation received your solicitor will likely prepare a report on title for you.

Given a month is only 20 working days, and your solicitor may be managing your expectations to a certain degree, I think it is highly unlikely that switching to a different solicitor is going to get things done any faster.

If your offer was accepted about a month ago, even if you say you're still a month away, 8 weeks from offer to exchange is pretty quick in today's world.