Did your solicitor lie to you?

knightstyle

We bought nearly 4 years ago and found our solicitor was not being truthful on several things about dates and sellers replies.
Now we are selling again and our new solicitors are doing the same.
For example they say they have only just received an email that our sellers sent a week ago, sellers sent us screen shot of sending the email.
Who can you trust when they do things like this?

silvercar

Had the same, solicitor claiming they had sent enquiries to the buyer when they hadn’t. Solicitor claiming they had gone for exchange at the start of the day when they hadn’t…

propertyrental

knightstyle said:

We bought nearly 4 years ago and found our solicitor was not being truthful on several things about dates and sellers replies.
Now we are selling again and our new solicitors are doing the same.
For example they say they have only just received an email that our sellers sent a week ago, sellers sent us screen shot of sending the email.
Who can you trust when they do things like this?

Your sellers have no legal relationship with your solicitor, so if (unlikely) they did indeed send your solicitor an email it would likely be ignored.

More likely they sent it to their solicitor, who sent it (or its contents) on to your solicitor - which is how these relationships work.

Stubod

..you can normally tell when a solicitor is lying...their lips move....

youth_leader

@Stubod I thought that joke was reserved for EAs!

cr1mson

Think you need to consider what received means! If seller sent it it doesn't mean it is received and ready to be actioned. It is unlikely that an email would be able to be dealt with on the same day even in the most efficient of organisations!!

ripplyuk

It’s not unique to conveyancing. In my experience, the lying/incompetence/carelessness is widespread in the legal profession. It’s due to a lack of consequences since unless you have a lot of money, time and energy to spare, it’s impossible to hold them accountable. I find it helps to be thorough with everything, asking for copies of all correspondence, clarifying details repeatedly, following up phone calls with emails to confirm etc. However this only reduces the problem a little. 

BarelySentientAI

It's amazing how many people think they are a solicitor's only client, with every email actioned at the moment the sender presses the button, every piece of mail read and responded to at the second it leaves the postie's hand, and the file permanently sat on the front of their desk with hands poised for action over the telephone.  Anything less than that would of course be incompetence, wouldn't it?

Or in the real world, client sends email to their own solicitor, their assistant opens it and decides that it needs the solicitor to react and adds it to the bottom of the to-do pile, where it gets picked up from after every other client's equally important correspondence higher in the queue has been dealt with, and an email sent to the other relevant solicitor, and their assistant.....

If someone sent me an email last week that worked its way to the top of my inbox today, then I'd probably say that I'd received it today as a sort of shorthand too.

BarelySentientAI

It's amazing how many people think they are a solicitor's only client, with every email actioned at the moment the sender presses the button, every piece of mail read and responded to at the second it leaves the postie's hand, and the file permanently sat on the front of their desk with hands poised for action over the telephone.  Anything less than that would of course be incompetence, wouldn't it?

Or in the real world, client sends email to their own solicitor, their assistant opens it and decides that it needs the solicitor to react and adds it to the bottom of the to-do pile, where it gets picked up from after every other client's equally important correspondence higher in the queue has been dealt with, and an email sent to the other relevant solicitor, and their assistant.....

If someone sent me an email last week that worked its way to the top of my inbox today, then I'd probably say that I'd received it today as a sort of shorthand too.

subjecttocontract

That's an excellent description of how things work in the real world.

Just as an aside many conveyancing firms offer a premium service for an extra fee. Your business is then dealt with on a priority basis. Well worth the extra fee in my opinion.

BarelySentientAI

subjecttocontract said:

Just as an aside many conveyancing firms offer a premium service for an extra fee. Your business is then dealt with on a priority basis. Well worth the extra fee in my opinion.

I've had clients like that - "we want you available on Tuesday throughout the day in case of urgent questions" - which they will get if they are willing to pay for it.

I've been paid for all sorts of strange things though.  Sitting in a car park in case someone unlocks the gate of a factory, sitting in court waiting rooms in case I need to give evidence, flying overseas to escort documents back to the UK, measuring Scandinavian electricity transmission lines on google earth...  If a client wants to pay for it, it'll probably get done.