Solicitors..... slow?

Diagro

Diagro

Diagro

Soldato
Joined
3 Jun 2012
Posts
11,259
Hi,

I've sold some land. The buyer paid their solicitor the entire balance inc the fee's last Friday.

My Solicitor has yet to hear ANYTHING from them.. and we are nearly a week later.

Is this normal?
 
Sounds about right. Recently waited over 2 months for a single signature on a pre-filled form in regards to a probate application. Ridiculous
 
Have a mate who is a solicitor, thought that would be a good option for house buying. No still had to chase all the time.
 
Solicitors tend to drag their feet. As for payment, even house purchases, the money will go through the same day if you pay an extra fee.

It's not necessarily automatically on the same day,it depends which method they use, CHAPS v BACS.
 
The way most solicitors work is that they will have hundreds of clients, and that is not an exaggeration, and for things that don't have a court deadline, like they are not trying to get a brief bundle together for a court date next week. Or have an entry in their calendar for them to look at a file. Everything gets done pretty much in the order of the stack of paper on their desk.

So you are essentially in a queue, even reading an email. It's not so much as "money in account" that automatically trigger a review of the file. More like they will review each file every week, once a week and then do what can be progressed on that file. This way, every client gets equal attention, every file gets reviewed.

When they get a letter, you can imagine they can get like 30, 50 letters every morning. Depends on the size of the firm, the large ones the mail room will opens all the letters, collate them into department or even solicitors and then distribute them in a stack per fee earner.

Now days the mail room might even scan each letter into the system, upload digitally into a file and it's for the fee earner to flag that job when the letter is actioned.

I would expect an average 7 day reply time scale, when everyone is at work...
 
Raymond Lin said:
The way most solicitors work is that they will have hundreds of clients, and that is not an exaggeration, and for things that don't have a court deadline, like they are not trying to get a brief bundle together for a court date next week. Or have an entry in their calendar for them to look at a file. Everything gets done pretty much in the order of the stack of paper on their desk.

So you are essentially in a queue, even reading an email. It's not so much as "money in account" that automatically trigger a review of the file. More like they will review each file every week, once a week and then do what can be progressed on that file. This way, every client gets equal attention, every file gets reviewed.

When they get a letter, you can imagine they can get like 30, 50 letters every morning. Depends on the size of the firm, the large ones the mail room will opens all the letters, collate them into department or even solicitors and then distribute them in a stack per fee earner.

Now days the mail room might even scan each letter into the system, upload digitally into a file and it's for the fee earner to flag that job when the letter is actioned.

I would expect an average 7 day reply time scale, when everyone is at work...
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Fun.

I'll just have to wait.
 
Maybe my solicitor and estate agent both being 5 minutes walk from the house I was selling and having used the solicitors before in a civil matter meant I got decent service.

Or I just got lucky.
 
Solicitors are serious tapeworms in modern society. The amount of time it's takes to do anything even remotely simple is beyond ridiculous. I've had the unfortunate experience of having to deal with several different firms of solicitors in the past two years and they're all incredibly slow for no reason they can give. It's taken months or even years for any progress to be made in many cases. It will undeniably depend on how good/ bothered the solicitor is. One I've been dealing with definitely needs to be drug out into the street and shot for the good of society...
 
Been very slow moving in my experience - I appreciate they've got a lot on their plate but then they often ask for information specifically formatted and collated supposedly for them to file and retrieve it quickly and then ask you for the specific bits of information all over again when they come to dealing with it anyway... (probably as a delay tactic)...

Sadly only way to get them moving in a reasonable time frame is often to kick up a stink.
 
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Hey @Diagro, interested in this process generally speaking.

We'd love to buy some land from our neighbour, we haven't approached them yet but wouldn't know where to start. Would you be able to share some insight into how this process played out for you please? Well, apart from the tardy solicitor bit. :D
 
With how much they charge I just don't understand the model they have adopted by having such a large backlog.
Accountants have a much lower charge rate and higher volume of work to get through - they somehow manage without constant chasing.
 
Oh Ed not again. said:
Hey @Diagro, interested in this process generally speaking.

We'd love to buy some land from our neighbour, we haven't approached them yet but wouldn't know where to start. Would you be able to share some insight into how this process played out for you please? Well, apart from the tardy solicitor bit. :D
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For me it was pretty easy. As I personally know the buyer. I really wouldn't know where to start for your situation.

Try a face to face chat, and see if there is a possibility they would sell some of their land. That's the best way to gauge the possible outcome.
 
Solicitors love delaying things, they think it makes them seem more busy than they are so that they can justify the crazy fees involved
 
Bear in mind the Goverment has completely wrecked the conveyancing market for several years now and many very good conveyancers have given up and left the industry forever.

Also, clients expect stupid things like:

1. No win no fee conveyancing;
2. Budget conveyancing costs but champagne service;
3. To be able to email or speak to their conveyancer at any time 7 days a week;
4. The general public has ZERO patience;
5. Estate agents are even worse than the general public for messing things up.
6. Lots and lots of conveyancing transactions are trapped in between “conveyancing farms” with understaffed, under supported and under qualified workers.

The whole thing is a mess and there’s no good things coming on the horizon to help for now.
 
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