Solicitor help! Urgent!

[Everything101]

Please recommend a solicitor for a house purchase (FTB).
All the ones recommended by friends have some sort of issue e.g., not taking on new clients, rubbish etc.

What are your top tips for choosing a solicitor?
Only option right now is the estate agent solicitors. Do we go with them?

Are they local and have you read their reviews online? They'll be working for you and your mortgage lender rather than the EA. I'd be less bothered about using the EA's solicitor recommendation than their in-house mortgage advisor.

I went with the solicitor suggested by our financial advisor as he sold he can get things done faster. I never really met him
If you need options I would recommend calling a few local solicitors who mention conveyancing on their website.

We used EA solicitor and it's been awful, we didn't know the name of the firm that would be assigned our sale as they contract to different ones. Once we started to have issues we looked them up on trust pilot etc and the reviews were terrible. If you are going to use EA solicitors I would ask which firms they use and do a little research. If we had we would not have used them. Exdp is now buying and using an online firm which was recommended by either mortgage broker or housing association (shared ownership property) and they have been great so it does depend who you get.

We used Bishopsgate law - Zahid jussub / Eleanora Peter. We exchanged last Wednesday. So far they have been absolutely fantastic. We have used many solicitors over the years but these are the first I ever would recommend.

Yes as pp said look on trust pilot for the ratings

Definitely, check the solicitors reviews and speak to them personally, before you engage them. Would be my advice. My solicitor was fantastic, during our transaction, I would happily recommend her, very professional, keep us calm when things were getting fraught with the sale. She dealt with my v impatient & demanding DH extremely well even he laughed and said well that told me 😂 when he put the phone down, just brilliant.

Thanks all, the solicitor is the agent's in-house solicitor i.e., same name with the agents if that makes any difference.

Brilliant @roselilly36, do you mind sharing their name.
I'll check out Bishopsgatelaw as well, thanks @penguinsmum

@Everything101 pm you.

Right Choice legal / conveyancing.

Go with a local solicitors firm where you can - one where, if it all goes pear shaped, you can walk into an office, sort the paperwork in person, and physically sit there until things get done.

Sounds like overkill at the beginning of a purchase when you have no reason to think anything bad will happen, and your EA is telling you how wonderful their in house solicitor is.
The reality - as I found out, unfortunately- is that "in house" often means a conveyancing factory hundreds of miles away, that doesn't respond to calls or emails. Which, when you're on the day of exchange and aren't getting answers from anyone, isn't very helpful - especially as "your" solicitor probably has 50-odd files on their desk and no reason to prioritise yours.

You then find yourself relying on one person in the chain to actually get things sorted (often a good local EA with their eye on commission) but if you don't have that one motivated person involved somewhere, who can chivvy things along, you're stuck.

Where abouts are you, geographically?

As someone above said, Bishopsgate Law are amazing. We are halfway through and their communication and pro-activeness has been amazing. Almost everything has been done digitally and very fast.

Another thing about Bishopsgate is that they accepted me right away on my first phone call. Took my details there and then.

trust pilot first of all go from there

I picked a local high st solicitors
My estate agent gave me a few names but said it was up to me
I picked the one that’s opposite my estate agents in the end
They are local firm and I can walk there in 5 mins and drop stuff off if I need to
So far they have been very good
They have an app which updates you through the process

I went with the EA recommendation and it was a disaster. Appalling customer service, a series of basic mistakes (including lost documents and putting the wrong price on the contract). Never again. I assume the EA got a rake off but they were the only people happy about the process.

Thank you all. We've made a decision now.
Hopefully all goes well

Ask EA who they use. Our EA and solicitors used a software programme and we were allocated a solicitor in Wales who was useless - misspelt names and addresses, deadlines missed etc. Really wouldnt recommend them. But DPs allocated solicitor in Manchester was ace!