Choosing A Conveyacing Solicitor: Don’t Let Your Estate Agent Bully You!
If your Estate Agent demands you must use “their lawyers” as your Conveyancing Solicitor for the Conveyancing on your home: Don’t be bullied
A few examples of such practices have been highlighted recently, where Sellers and Buyers have been denied access or at best strongly advised against using their existing Conveyancing solicitors in favour a firms 150 to 300 miles away.
Not such a calamity, you may say, if your move goes ahead without any Conveyancing nightmares, but why do you need to take that risk?
Popping up quite regularly is the phrase “Free HIP”: As with lunches there is normally no such thing.
You can be pretty sure unless the HIP provider and the Solicitors are one and the same that you will be paying for the HIP by increased fees elsewhere.
Knowledge is Power, as some wise man said, so you can save yourself hassle later by knowing what benefits your Conveyancing Solicitor should provide throughout the course of your home move
Here are 23 tips which may be too many, so just work out what are the most relevant for you when you choose your Conveyancing Solicitor.
Here goes. Your Conveyancing Solicitor should:
1. Understand the unique nature of your matter?
2 Shut up and Listen carefully to what you have to say?
3 Explain what they were going to do and why and not just assume you knew and already understood?
4 Help you understand the reasons behind what was going on rather than just telling you what was going on?
5 Keep you informed when you want to be, and how you wish to communicate; letter, fax, email, text message?
6 Avoid jargon and write to you in plain English?
7 Make sure they are accessible when you want them to be?
8 Keep their promises?
9 Keep to deadlines?
10 Involve you in major points of the work?
11 Show an interest beyond the work at hand?
12 Be helpful beyond the task for which they were paid?
13 Treat you as an individual not a case or matter number
14 Guarantee to return every call by the end of the day
15 Provide common sense solutions to problems without making a song and dance about it
16 Counsel you and give you a helping hand, when the stress of moving gets too much
17 Give you a loyalty discount next time you use our services
18 Show you all the charges before we start to work for you and no nasty bill shock
19 Make it easy for you to contact us so you don’t have to take time off work
20 Give you a guarantee that you can always speak to the lawyer dealing with your matter
21 Give you access to your matter with web tracking and text updates
22 Provide you with unrivalled local knowledge, and not just on legal matters
23 Above all, provide testimonials from clients proving the your Conveyancer don’t just talks the talk- but walks the walk
If you were only going to one thing, let it be this: Ring the Conveyancing firm first.
If your Conveyancing firm tells you that your call is important to us but your call will be held in a queue until the next available case handler is available. RUN A MILE and tell your Estate Agent you won’t be using that Conveyancing firm.
Bully for you!
