Becca Harbour
Our buyer instructed this solicitor at the end of April, and unfortunately the experience was disappointing from start to finish. The case was initially handled by a trainee who failed to contact our solicitors until they were chased. When documents were eventually sent across, they were incomplete, resulting in repeated requests for missing information and unnecessary back-and-forth communication. There were also frequent periods where the solicitor's office was difficult to contact or unresponsive. The case was later transferred to the originally appointed solicitor, who was an improvement but still worked very slowly. On one occasion, they even complained about being chased for updates, despite the significant delays already experienced. Matters became worse when the solicitor went on annual leave without arranging a handover to another team member. This left everyone without a point of contact for almost three weeks until management became involved. Throughout the transaction, there also seemed to be a reluctance to acknowledge that certain legal documents were required, instead suggesting that we were simply insisting on them. In reality, these were standard legal requirements necessary to progress the sale. Overall, the transaction took far longer than it should have due to poor communication, delays, lack of continuity, and inadequate case management, it happened so often there would be over a week without hearing from them we even started to joke they could only handle one task every 2 weeks and even went as far as hand delivery signed documents to the office. On the day we had set to complete an exchange suprise suprise more issues, they recieved confimation the day before that the seller was happy to exchange and complete and didnt do anything about it, then chased her the morning of to ask! Mortgage finally completed in 10 weeks which although this is within the "12 week guide" it was completely chain free so I dread to think how long a chain property would take. We firmly believe the sale would have progressed much more efficiently had a different conveyancer been used.