We Are Moving!

[Westmarcher]

Imo., a lot of solicitors are a bunch of chancers. On at least three occasions, I can cite examples where I ran rings around them on their lack of knowledge. Often as not, you are dealing with unqualified, underpaid individuals and not the actual qualified solicitors within the firm. Once you escalate things, they will cave in and things will start to happen.

[steve_holmes_11]

My wife's an estate agent. Every night she comes home with tales of woe about how absolutely useless solicitors are.

Pro tip: If there's any sort of hold-up in your house purchase, >98% chance it's because of a solicitor somewhere.

Estate Agents Vs Solicitors.

Harry Hill might say "There's only one way to decide this - FIGHT!!!!!

We would ask "OK, but what rules?"

[paulr]

Rules, what rules

[mmcv]

We just moved house yesterday. It's been a long old process with the first house falling through and having to move quickly on a second lest we lose our buyer.

Our solicitor was great, a family friend and very attentive and communicative, but he gave off numerous times about how poor the other three sets of solicitors were to deal with. Slow to respond, not sending things through, weeks without replying, never returning calls... Seems to be s common theme. Lot of kids handling accounts they've no experience with. Was literally the evening before the move when all the bits were actually in place so we knew for sure we could go. Then dealing with the mortgage company from my old mortgage was a nightmare (thankfully new mortgage company is much more efficient).

Can sympathise with your plight, but hope it all comes into place for you! Just keep on at them as often as it takes to move things on. And the estate agents can sometimes apply pressure too if someone is dragging their feet.

[Techno II]

Good news, Matthew ! 

Steve....Hope you get sorted soon !

We were SO lucky with our last sale.

The buyer paid us up front.....and said we could stay in the old home for almost as long as we liked.....(a month rent free...and he'd only start charging rent after that month)...while we looked for our next home...The current Techno Towers.

The buyer was a pretty wealthy neighbour, who didn't want to see a group of houses built on our old home's land.
After he'd paid us, Von started looking on the 'net'.....found three or four potentials, with this place 'the favourite'... after that she drove over here on a recce.
Made an offer on this place....accepted...so the wheels were set in motion...Really fast result.
Before it was all sorted out, Von asked.."Do you want to go and have a look at the place ?"......"Nah...if you like it, I'm sure I will".
I'd never seen Techno Towers until the day we moved.
Von WAS fairly bothered that I wouldn't like it on the day we drove over...

The only iffy thing that happened on the day of the move, was the removal  firm telling us that they wouldn't be delivering any of our stuff until the next day...So we ended up sleeping on the sofa and chairs that we'd bought from the previous owners.

Cheers - Phil

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

My mums a lawyer.
She's a bloody good one. Even if the family can't stand her. She gets it done.
She always says that to get things done phone at 9.30 each and every morning. Even if you don't need to. It annoys them and keeps you in the loop. Why 9.30? Lawyers get flooded with family/marriage issues at 9 each morning, and will prioritise those.
Then ask for the complaint forms...

[FierceKitty]

They say an unrepresentative 99% of lawyers get the rest a bad reputation.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

They say an unrepresentative 99% of lawyers get the rest a bad reputation.

As few as that !

[steve_holmes_11]

I've less experience than many of you, but have had good results by applying the same rules as I would for any other hired professional; from roofer to datacentre construction manager.

* Figure out what you want/need in advance, write it down and try to not make changes once they've started work.
* Ask for a written quote on price and completion date.
* Ask for regular updates (Could be daily, weekly, or when certain milestones have been achieved), this could be a phone-call, a brief email update, or a face to face (mask to mask?) if it's a long and complex business.
* Demand to know immediately if events (dear boy) affect the timeline, or viability of the plan.

It all sounds a bit official, but with preparation, you can squeeze your requirements and expectations into that initial 30 minute meeting.

On the other hand, some people are just useless at organising things, others delegate to the cheapest employee in the office (who ought to be photocopying and making tea).
On that subject, why does every 3 person office have an industrial strength photocopier the size of a range cooker?
The sort that would happily serve a building with 500 staff.

[Leon]

Can sympathise with your plight, but hope it all comes into place for you! Just keep on at them as often as it takes to move things on. And the estate agents can sometimes apply pressure too if someone is dragging their feet.

I'm emailing daily at the moment trying to get them to do something.  It's the lack of any structured process that I can't fathom?  They do this thing hundreds of times a year but no-one can provide me with an itemised flowchart of what to expect and what will be needed.  Had we been given something to work with I could have got 90% of the last-minute queries dealt with months ago.

She always says that to get things done phone at 9.30 each and every morning. Even if you don't need to. It annoys them and keeps you in the loop. Why 9.30? Lawyers get flooded with family/marriage issues at 9 each morning, and will prioritise those.
Then ask for the complaint forms...

I'll start doing that on Monday, definitely.  Most of the time when I ring him it just goes to answerphone and I have to leave messages but someone else from his firm got involved on Friday so I'll be ringing them as well. 

* Figure out what you want/need in advance, write it down and try to not make changes once they've started work.
* Ask for a written quote on price and completion date.
* Ask for regular updates (Could be daily, weekly, or when certain milestones have been achieved), this could be a phone-call, a brief email update, or a face to face (mask to mask?) if it's a long and complex business.
* Demand to know immediately if events (dear boy) affect the timeline, or viability of the plan.

It all sounds a bit official, but with preparation, you can squeeze your requirements and expectations into that initial 30 minute meeting.

That's one of the annoying things from our end because we had that chat with everyone at the beginning and they all told us that it would be complete and done by mid-Feb, as our rental contract was due to end on the 31st Mar.  When the bank started dragging their feet a bit I got an extension from our landlord through to 30th Apr, just to give us some cover in case things took longer.  The timescales have been communicated to all of them throughout and here we are now, a week from our target completion date and still no end in sight.

The trouble is that we need at least 5 weeks to move into the new place.  We need 2 weeks to kit it out with new rooms, wiring, workstations, etc.  Then another 2 weeks to bring all of the machines, moulds and stock over from Pendraken, get phone lines installed, etc.  And then 1 final week to redecorate and restore the current unit before we give the keys back.  I've squeezed those timeframes as much as possible and dropped a few plans from the schedule but I don't have any leeway left now.  We can't get another extension on the rental either as they've got new tenants ready to move straight in, so all I can do now is badger these lazy bar-stewards on a daily basis and look forward to a lot of 14-hour shifts if we don't get completed on the 26th.

[John Cook]

The key things about professions people dislike is that they tend to be well paid, require some kind of specialist training and, as a result, can be bit of a mystery.  So, to envy and lack of comprehension add today's culture of victimhood.

I've used solicitors to move house twice, write wills and, on three occasions, execute wills.  Can't say I have any complaints.

I must admit, though, that your experiences so far, do seem unreasonable.

[toxicpixie]

Most actual lawyers aren't that well paid, but the high earners in "exciting" positions at the top suck up a disproportionate amount of "screen time" and money...

I have had it said by practising solicitors that no action is taken/not taken without instruction by the client, with the implication it's the person they're acting for that's to blame. In my house buying experience that did indeed appear to be the case, but on anecdotal experience from others it suggests that every person except solicitors is deliberately screwing the whole process... which seems less likely

[John Cook]

Most actual lawyers aren't that well paid, but the high earners in "exciting" positions at the top suck up a disproportionate amount of "screen time" and money...

The average salary of a solicitor in the UK is £70K.  The average annual pay of a person in the UK is £29K, apparently.  I think £70 will sound like 'well paid' to most people in the UK.

[Leon]

We're dealing with one of the partners so in the T&C's we received he's on £235-£300 per hour...

[Ithoriel]

The average salary of a solicitor in the UK is £70K.  The average annual pay of a person in the UK is £29K, apparently.  I think £70 will sound like 'well paid' to most people in the UK.

Average, on the latest figures I could find, 29k for women and 38k for men.

I'd love to see the mean rather, than average, figures but 30 minutes googling is all I'm willing to commit to the search and in that time I couldn't find up to date figures. The google fu is weak in this one

[toxicpixie]

Yes, thats actually 'Cos the "Magic Circle" and big City corporate positions offer their top few stupendous salaries in the six figures and upwards. Who suck up a vastly disproportionate amount of the "lawyering budget", as it were.

And note that's explicitly referring to *solicitors* which is a long and ludicrously awkward training/acceptance scheme intended to keep numbers down and prices high.

The vast bulk of lawyers in the UK are not on that sort of money, and even any solicitor you or I will deal with is very unlikely to hit that money - unless you're literally dealing with the boss.

Not that most of law is a badly paid profession, but it's only great if you have the ability to get an "in" at the right level, as with so much of our economy.

Similar situation to my work in IT. Our wage budget looks decent split equally, but the  boss sucks up two, two and half shares of it, their boss sucks up five shares of it and so on.

[toxicpixie]

Tl, dr - despite being seen as well paid, law suffers from the same inequalities in wealth and income that the rest of the country does

Just from a mildly higher starting point.

Ithoriel - prospects.ac.Uk has some good info on reasonably realistic wage scenarios for the law in general and solicitors in specific. It's still a bit focused on "look at what the top 1% can get!" But at least they acknowledge you're likely to spend a decade training and then assuming you pass and can find a job you'll probably be doing either high street or corporate law at generically somewhat above average skilled professional rates until a couple decades more when if you're lucky you'll make partner and hit top ten percent earnings!

[John Cook]

Sounds a bit too conspiratorial.  Just as long as the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and George Soros aren't involved.

[toxicpixie]

 

John, the the "Magic Circle" is what the big five City law firms call themselves/are known as - it's been their informal group name for decades.

Edit: a fuller answer is that they're the five most prestigious and high earning firms, based in London. They just happen to almost exclusively deal in corporate law. The next five are Silver Circle buts a new term (early 2000's) and they've undergone a lot of change.

Wiki has a good precis if you find law magazines dull, with a very apt to the wages discussion bit in the "Relationship to the Silver Circle" part...

[hammurabi70]

The key things about professions people dislike is that they tend to be well paid, require some kind of specialist training and, as a result, can be bit of a mystery.  So, to envy and lack of comprehension add today's culture of victimhood.

I've used solicitors to move house twice, write wills and, on three occasions, execute wills.  Can't say I have any complaints.

I must admit, though, that your experiences so far, do seem unreasonable.

Most actual lawyers aren't that well paid, but the high earners in "exciting" positions at the top suck up a disproportionate amount of "screen time" and money...

As a generality dentists and doctors have been the best paid people because the mean is higher in those professions than that of others.  Businessmen and professional accountants do not earn the vast telephone number salaries that can be attributed to a few people in the City of London but as a general statement they do seem to earn a good salary in comparison with others.  As with lawyers and most other professions a few very wealthy income earners bias the salary statistics.  The real image damage is those in the really big business companies where senior remuneration packages are now becoming astronomical multiples compared to the income of the average member of staff.

My impression of the legal trade is that they over extend themselves by taking on more work than they can cope with, so in the end he, or she, who shouts loudest and most often, gets attention.  The whiff of currency notes does wonders.