Changing solicitors after starting the home buying process

[heatherkay333]

My husband and I are first time buyers - we found a 2 bedroom flat in SE London (moving from North London). We are very excited about this but the process is taking ages - we had an offer accepted in mid April and we are still waiting on paperwork. However, the bigger issue is that we don’t hear from our solicitor very often and when we do, we have further questions. We email / follow up at least 2X per week and we hear back once every 10 days. We have asked her a few things that she didn’t know (which she should) and we also asked about something that she missed entirely. We are going to try to get a hold of her this week via phone (she seems very hard to get a hold of) - we are wondering if it’s possible to change solicitors at this stage? We realise we would need to pay her for the work she has done so far - but is this possible? We also thought to write to her supervisor if we cannot get a hold of her. Thank you for your help.

You can definitely do it but there's no guarantee your new solicitor would be any better and you may have run up a few hundred in fees already. I think I would talk to her instead and express your concerns. If you still feel unsatisfied you could ask for the name of her supervisor and start copying them into emails after explaining that you have concerns.

Thank you so much for your quick response - that is really helpful and makes sense. We will do that and see how it goes. Thank you!

Agree with above and also if you escalate to the supervisor and no improvement then you could ask for another solicitor from the same firm which would hopefully help without being as much of a hassle.

I did once change solicitor when buying/selling, but only to another in the same firm. It did help a lot.