Solicitor etiquette

hannahbond37

What do you guys think?
Emailed our solicitor all TA06 etc forms yesterday, had an immediate out of office reply. Forwarded on the docs to the contact on his email. The out of office said he would be away until 10th November. I haven't had any reply from the person covering about the receipt of any of the documents. Would you think someone covering should be able to progress the sale and should reply to me in my solicitors absense, or does the whole process have to grind to a halt while he's off? I'm annoyed I haven't received any response from them, is one day too pushy to expect a reply. I always reply to my work emails immediately - why are conveyancers so hard to deal with

DoaM

hannahbond37 wrote: »

What do you guys think?
... is one day too pushy to expect a reply(

Yes .

Guest101

Do you perhaps think a solicitor might be a too busy to reply with-in hours? Having their own case load and at least part managing their colleagues?


If you have a role which sits you at your computer full time, it would be pretty easy to reply, but solicitors do work outside of the office and may specialise in common areas of law


So Family, Divorce and Conveyancing would go fairly well together. The solicitor could simply be representing other clients, or not even specialise in conveyancing at all.


Alternatively they don't feel they need to reply as they've received the documents.


Are you expecting to exchange before the 10th November? If not then no need to even forward it on

hannahbond37

No not expecting to exchange but hoping that surveys etc can be carried out in this time otherwise we may as well have kept the documents until the 10th

Surrey_EA

For a solicitor that specialises in conveyancing it would not be unusual to have 100 files on the go at any one time, therefore if a colleague is covering in the absence of your solicitor they may have 100 files of their own, in addition to 100 they are covering for their colleague.

So one day is not enough time to allow a response. Unfortunately buying a property takes time, and rarely moves as quickly as one would like. The best thing is to relax a bit and not expect everything to happen on the same day, you will likely find the whole thing a less stressful experience if you do.

Surrey_EA

hannahbond37 wrote: »

No not expecting to exchange but hoping that surveys etc can be carried out in this time otherwise we may as well have kept the documents until the 10th

Your solicitor being away is not going to stop a survey taking place.

hannahbond37

But presumably a solicitor has to action all of this? Look through my documentation, send it to our vendors solicitor, action any questions they have. That's what i'm asking, is it reasonable to expect someone to do this stuff in his absence?

Surrey_EA

No, not unreasonable. I'm sure someone will forward the relevant documentation to the solicitor acting for your buyer, to allow them to begin their searches and investigate the title. It is highly unlikely that there will be any questions your solicitor needs to respond to before 10th November.

I advise most people to allow 12 weeks for everything to be ready, and to treat anything quicker than that as a bonus.

G_M

In a small firm, particularly a one-man firm, cover for absences will be stretched or non-existent. Though you should have been warned.

In a larger firm, there should be cover and progress should be continued.

Havig said that, soliitors focus on doing the work, not responding with emals that add nothing. They have got the documents from you that they needed, so now they will put them in their 'action' pile and deal with them in turn. When they need anything further from you, or discover an issue they need to inform you of, they will contact you.

Cheeky_Monkey

hannahbond37 wrote: »

But presumably a solicitor has to action all of this? Look through my documentation, send it to our vendors solicitor, action any questions they have. That's what i'm asking, is it reasonable to expect someone to do this stuff in his absence?

How do you know that they're not doing just that? You don't. You are making an assumption.

If you are going to be like this at the beginning, don't be surprised when your solicitor/secretary is constantly unavailable when you phone. They will contact you when the need arises.

I appreciate that you are a first time seller but, judging by this and your other posts, you seriously need to lower your unreasonable expectations or you are going to be in a constant state of stress :eek:

scriv

I am also going through selling at the moment and sent in my documents to my solicitor over the course of a week or so and his team amassed all the info I sent in and then when they had everything, sent it on to the buyer's solicitor at the appropiate stage. A file has to be drawn up for you, so the admin team can be doing that in the solicitor's absence ready for him to action when he is back. I am sure things will be moving behind the scenes.

We were also told 10-12 weeks.

Don't harass them with emails at this stage, let them get on with all that needs to be done