Crazy bill from old conveyancer

[conveyancingwoe]

Afternoon all. I got some brilliant advice here a couple of months ago (can't even remember my name change) about our old conveyancer.

Basically he was trying to charge us £7,500 + VAT, plus outlays for straightforward purchase conveyancing.

This does not include stamp duty or anything else, and is JUST for purchase conveyancing - we weren't selling another property.

We are in Northern Ireland which has one of the cheapest housing markets and usually most reasonable fees.

We changed our solicitors after advice from here, he was very very evasive about the cost issue.

BUT immediately asked us to pay him £750+ VAT for the work already done.

He has very reluctantly given us an invoice for this a few weeks ago, but didn't break down the costs - provided a list of services then just the amount (£750+VAT)

He is now threatening to refer us to a debt recovery business!

We never agreed this amount, he won't break it down into individual costs for us and he is being quite aggressive and evasive at the same time.

What is our recourse? Isn't it standard to properly itemise legal bills if demanded? Should we just pay it, or take it to the Law Society NI to look at?

Help! This is such a horrible situation. Plus, in the work that he's done, I think he's made two errors anyway (well either he has or our new one has, but our new one has about forty years experience of conveyancing in the area).

I hate confrontation and am already finding this house purchase stressful enough, so all advice (even if just to pay it and move on) is welcomed. Thanks.

Agree about not offering anything, you accept by offering half that you do indeed owe them something when actually since they never issued you with any documents and you didn’t sign anything you aren’t their client and never were

Do you think?

We asked them to convey the purchase

They agreed

We got into some conversations and they did give some advice and I believe do some work.

THEN they sent their quotation and all the info about the complaints procedures etc.

I don’t dispute that they did some work and I am happy to pay for that.

I dispute how much it is! And that they won’t give a breakdown. So annoying of them as like I say they are a perfectly ordinary high st firm, they were recommended to me by someone who is mortified and furious with their behaviour (as it’s embarrassing for them), and as others have said, completely out of financial proportion to the other conveyancing costs typical in NI.

More fool them for carrying out work without an engagement letter in place, IMO. Firms have standard templates, it would have taken them maybe 20 minutes to bash something out. Instead, they spent that time racking up charges with no thought for whether you would be happy to pay for them.

Yes that’s what my in law said.

So I think we should say

You did not immediately issue us with a quotation, fee schedule or terms of engagement.
The fee you eventually quoted us was stratospherically more expensive than any other fee for conveyancing that we have ever experienced, been quoted for this job, or anecdotally heard of anyone in NI being charged. As a comparison, your own website currently states that your conveyancing package starts at £375+VAT, and you have offered us no explanation or justification as to why you would expect to charge us 20 times this.

When we queried it you did not reply.

When we informed you we had then changed solicitors you continued to evade the issue of the extraordinarily high quoted fee.

You were reluctant to give us an invoice at all and wanted us just to pay you £900 immediately with no invoice which we find extremely unusual practice for a reputable solicitors’ practice.

You have not broken down the invoice by fee per item so that we can see what we would be expected to pay for.

When asked to provide us with a detailed itemisation you have refused and immediately threatened us with debt collectors.

We have never signed any engagement letter or indeed any agreement with you at all.

We are seeking legal advice this morning and availing of your formal complaints procedure, as a forerunner to complaining to the Law Society about your conduct throughout.

How does that sound?

Cannot believe how this has turned out, why on earth would a professional behave like this??

I would try and cut it back and not use words like "stratospherically". If you give them room to argue they will. You don't want this to descend into an argument about whether or not their fees are high, or who did what when.

Simply put, they were not instructed to act on your behalf of incur the costs of disbursements on your behalf. They undertook work - without instruction - prior to issuing an engagement letter and terms, and once you received these you instructed alternative solicitors as their charges were much higher than the market rate.

*or incur the costs of disbursements on your behalf.

When I was buying the solicitor asked the price of the property & gave me a straight figure of what it would cost, I asked if it would change & got told no.

When we've instructed solicitors for conveyancing the first thing they do is send out the legal pack/law society forms, once those are returned the process has officially started. We have had these forms sent out to us and then changed our mind and this hasn't been an issue.

They're trying it on op. Keep your email factual - you didn't instruct them or enter into a contract with them therefore you will not be paying.

So legally is the ‘instruction’ bit when we’ve accepted the terms and signed the engagement letter?

Yes, solicitors need to be "instructed" in order to act for you. The easiest way of determining if you're instructed is by having your client sign an engagement letter. But some solicitors may consider themselves instructed if they've received explicit instructions from you to carry out work (such as if you asked them to begin searches), or if they've sent you their engagement letter and you've continued to engage with them in a way which indicates you accept their engagement letter/ terms.

I am not a lawyer but I have worked in law firms for very many years and my partner is a lawyer, so this isn't legal advice - it is only informed by my experience over the years.

Law firms can't charge for work done without an engagement letter in place particularly for this type of work. All lawyers know that even though some pretend it's not the case.

@mobear and @helpmemakeit are speaking sense. I sit on the SRA (Solicitor Regulatory Board) and the gold standard for having entered into an attorney-client relationship is signing the engagement letter. If you didn't get and sign that, with standard terms of business then you didn't instruct the original conveyancer.

Stick to your guns and complain.

Spoke to our current solicitor this morning who quite clearly and understandably wants to stay well clear of it, and a mate who is a solicitor here, and they both say complain formally to the firm, then to Law Society.

Basically everyone is saying the same thing!

Current solicitor is just looking at a couple of emails for us and coming back to us then I will compose a suitable reply!

UPDATE: solicitor digging heels in and getting very combative!

Stick to your guns. It doesn’t sound like they’ve got a leg to stand on.

Have you contacted the law society? @conveyancingwoe

Solicitor has refused to break down bill further, refused to answer my email asking for more explanation as to why the costs are so high and giving him the option to reissue the bill at a more reasonable rate or at least justify by breaking down the costs into the usual ‘£100 for a phone call’ type stuff.

He didn’t answer my email and just sent a one liner on fri telling us he’s passed us to debt recovery!

Meanwhile, our new solicitor has confirmed that two pieces of the advice he offered in writing are in fact wrong! (I have really pushed him on this to triple check).

So I’ve submitted a written three page letter of formal complaint to the practice, including how upset we were to be threatened with debt recovery on a Sunday afternoon which is completely inappropriate and unprofessional for a family firm in NI which is very old fashioned and conventional in many ways and where a lot of people are very serious practicing Christians who observe Sunday.

I expect I’ll get nowhere, but I have actually had a solicitor friend here look it all over and I’ve actually decided that since I have a strong paper trail showing I’ve constantly sought more information, clarity, breakdown AND now said very explicitly to the managing partner that I am at all times reluctant to go through these formal processes, am committed to amicable negotiation etc, have never said I won’t pay, and have never signed anything, plus the advice that he offered is now possibly wrong, that both the law society and the small claims court should we get there will look very favourably on my efforts and not be very impressed with his constant stonewalling and threats.

@Hexinthecity but to answer your question, no because you have to complain formally to the practice first. So I’ve done that, and also asked for confirmation that I can go through taxation.

Any more advice welcomed!

Bloody hell @conveyancingwoe it’s genuinely hard to understand what he’s playing at! Not sure what he’s actually expecting you to do other than complain to the practice and take it further because who in their right mind would just roll over and pay 7.5k for literally nothing? It’ll be interesting to see what the head of the practice comes back with as a response, surely anything other than a sincere and grovelling apology would be ludicrous. If that’s not what you get, straight to the law society!

No he just wants us to pay £750+VAT now, but yes I agree it’s extraordinary especially since obviously everyone who hears about it goes ‘flipping hell, £9k for conveyancing? In NI? And they’re really arsey and combative?’ And mentally strikes the firm off their list.

might be time to leave them a google review!

Its so hard to find people / firms that you can trust, most people aren't buying or selling houses often enough to know any different and will just accept what a solicitor says and bills them for. To think this guy is out there ripping the arse out of clients is disgusting and surely brings the practice into disrepute.

@Hexinthecity I know what you mean, and I wouldn’t even have to be critical, just state how much he was going to charge, but I am really trying to be dignified and fair, unused to work in a really savage contentious industry and moving back to NI is def part of me living a nice life where I am nice to people and people are nice to me. (Current legal issues are exceptional!)

I mean presumably they would just respond to my google comment with a counter comment (although wouldn’t they have to be confidential re our details?) and then we’re just in a spat.

I’d probably wait until after the situation is resolved to leave a review. It is good to warn others, but it is opening up another channel of communication and might be seen as blackmail. I only ever leave bad reviews when I either (a) haven’t been able to get a response at all in the hope of getting one; (b) the problem is resolved but I think it proper to warn others of the difficulties I went through.