Speeding up slow solicitors

[HDDD]

Any tips for speeding up slow solicitors?
How have you managed to get them to get their fingers out?
Context - I'm the seller. No chain. Going into week 8 and my patience is wearing thin.

@user1487194234

At the moment if you phoned me every day I would withdraw from acting for you HTH

So if someone was paying you thousands and you were providing a subpar service and they called you out on it you’d ditch them? Wow so professional.

So if someone was paying you thousands and you were providing a subpar service and they called you out on it you’d ditch them? Wow so professional.

The cost of conveyancing is set to accommodate a certain amount of contact and updating. If a client is calling every day it’s unproductive and prevents the solicitor from doing their job. I don’t do conveyancing but I’d also stop acting in this situation.

I am genuinely (no, not be sarcastic!) to know what industries some of the posters work in, where it's considered fine to ignore customers and not provide updates???

I would imagine in most industries if a client was calling for updates every single day they wouldn't be a client for very long (or they'd receive a very large bill). Most of the time there will be nothing to say.

@cloudtree

So if someone was paying you thousands and you were providing a subpar service and they called you out on it you’d ditch them? Wow so professional.

The cost of conveyancing is set to accommodate a certain amount of contact and updating. If a client is calling every day it’s unproductive and prevents the solicitor from doing their job. I don’t do conveyancing but I’d also stop acting in this situation.

I get what you are saying but the OP is describing a situation where they are not even getting the bare minimum communication, so in that situation if the solicitor then ditched them for regularly calling to try and get things moving then that would be awful behaviour on the solicitors’ part. Of course if someone was doing the job you were paying them for competently and you kept calling them everyday then that would be completely justifiable grounds to terminate their contract - but this is not the situation in the OP’s case.

No but no need to call every day. Call once, get an update,no need to call for a few weeks.

The point of the (very polite) daily call is that it does prod the solicitor into action and of course once you get action underway you don’t need to keep doing it: but if you aren’t getting progress it is a simple encouragement to the recalcitrant solicitor in this case. When it becomes quicker to send the email or whatever it is they need to do than answer yet another call, you might start getting progress.

A solicitor who both didn’t do their job and then fired me as a client for encouraging them to do their job is a solicitor I wouldn’t want.

Thanks for the useful replies here. Much appreciated.
No nearer anything. Still frustrated. The industry needs a shake up.

A very polite daily call is still a 6 minute unit and a charge of £40 plus vat..

@cloudtree

A very polite daily call is still a 6 minute unit and a charge of £40 plus vat..

Is that normal for conveyancing though? For both the firms we recently used they told us how much the whole process was upfront and that’s the price we paid. We didn’t ever need to call either firm though as both kept us in the loop - are you saying if we had called them they would have charged extra? No other industry would get away with what some solicitors seem to!

I’m saying if you called them excessively they would probably charge you more (depending on how they quoted you initially). To be fair it isn’t unreasonable to charge more if you have to spend longer working on something because the client demands extra attention.

We typically charge in 6 minute units (I don’t do conveyancing). A short call still requires a time recording entry and a detailed file note plus the time spent on the call.

OP I feel you. I had a terrible solicitor who dragged on their feet for months. They never picked up the phone. No update. My emails not replied. Enquiries not tracked . When solicitor told the EA that there were only "a couple" of outstanding queries, I had to remind them that in fact there were about 20 🤦

I was very patient and only prod them once in a while. It was a big mistake. They only sprang into action after I sent a furious email saying my puchase would fall through because of their delays.

A polite daily 6 minute call from over 100 ongoing clients means very unproductive days, i.e. no actual work being achieved.

I've decided now that although my solicitors have awful auto-replies with an eff right off tone they are doing the job here. The other side solicitors appear to be the slow ones and the obfuscating ones and the throwing up new enquiries ones. I'm adding my estate agent to the utterly useless pile and I cannot wait for them to send me their post sale feedback email. I will let rip with my feedback. I have at least signed now. Awaiting an update from solicitors office before the end of play today. As I said before, the sector needs a kick up the aris.

I've just gone through a painfully long sale/purchase. At the start I left them to get on with it but I wasn't getting much feedback - when I did chase the solicitors they were passively waiting for something from the vendors but in the meantime the vendors purchase was on hold for some land registry issue and they were all just sat there doing nothing. It took me calling the sols and EA to get things moving. I think if one party (my vendors in this case) aren't in a rush them someone needs to keep things moving and that was down to me. The EAs did their job of pushing and prodding but I had to keep on top of them constantly.

I have been dealing with a solicitor who we appointed to deal with two wills, probate and a house sale for nearly 12 months. They don’t answer emails (I haven’t had a single reply), respond to messages left (never answer the phone) and I have actually spoken to them once.
Excuses from them include that they’re working from home with three small children, have had Covid, only work 3 days a week, etc. When I’m paying them an exorbitant amount of money I expect at the very least some kind of update ffs! They also seem to take leave very frequently without notifying us.
Utterly useless.
Any tips for finding one that actually does communicate?

My solicitor has just this morning asked for something I provided a whole fecking month ago. I am at the end of my tether and wondering what to do next. Raise a complaint? To who, all of them? The EA, my solicitor (to a lesser degree I think) and/or their solicitors who I believe are shocking. I need this sorting and I am at a loss.

I think it depends on if you are using a solicitor or one of those £299 conveyancing companies 😂
The ones I am using to sell have an App so everything gets updated via the app