Can solicitor insist on signature to say 500 page document contents digested and understood?

PlymBob

My solicitor sent ALL property purchase documents in one long electronic document over 500 pages long. There was no “contents” page, or index, just a brief letter naming 8 enclosures, dated 3 months previously. There was a lot of repetition, but no way to separate out any of the many documents that had been thrown together in one contiguous whole. So, similar looking documents could not be compared side by side to confirm whether or not they were duplicates. Individual documents could not be separated and sorted, and without going through the 548 pages in entirety one had no idea what was coming next. It had all the appearance of someone having thrown together every single document, regardless of whether it was already present. Due to its length I could not say whether it comprised of 8 or more items.

I do not believe it is at all reasonable to expect a client to fully digest and understand over 500 pages of legal documents. Surely that is what I am paying a solicitor to do. In fact in the normal course of events it would take me several days to read through over 500 pages of non-legal text, even without the requirement to fully understand it.

However, I do not believe that signing such a document is an essential part of the conveyancing process at all. So why am I expected to sign to say that I have done so, when due to lack of legal training and experience I am highly unlikely to have digested and understood it all?

user1977

What are the documents? Has your solicitor really given you no advice about their contents?

FlorayG

Insist on a paper copy. I always do. That will put the onus on THEM to not duplicate stuff

PlymBob

I just re-opened this mega document and discover that it was sent by the vendors solicitor over 3 months previously. It was only sent to me a couple of weeks ago. These are the enclosures listed (by the vendors solicitor):

Draft contract, Office copies entries and filed plan, Lease, Leasehold information Form, Fittings and Contents Form, Property Information Form, EPC

My solicitor has stated: “You cannot rely on myself to make sure everything is correct as you have stated below. Of course it is our job to advise you, but everyone has a subjective/different views on matters and that cannot be accounted for by myself when reporting to you. A clause in a lease that is satisfactory to one Client may not be to another for example.  

It is for that reason that we produce all of the relevant documents for you and then guide you through them with your actual report.”

He has not provided guidance. The only advice has been to answer half a dozen questions that I generated in plodding through the 500 page document that he sat on for 3 months. Some of those were incomplete answers requiring me to read the other (massive) documents again.

user1977

They should be producing a precis of the main points and highlighting anything important/unusual. You are paying them to give you advice (not just act as a postbox), so you may wish to remind them of that...

saajan_12

PlymBob said:

My solicitor has stated: “You cannot rely on myself to make sure everything is correct as you have stated below. Of course it is our job to advise you, but everyone has a subjective/different views on matters and that cannot be accounted for by myself when reporting to you. A clause in a lease that is satisfactory to one Client may not be to another for example.  

It is for that reason that we produce all of the relevant documents for you and then guide you through them with your actual report.”

He has not provided guidance. The only advice has been to answer half a dozen questions that I generated in plodding through the 500 page document that he sat on for 3 months. Some of those were incomplete answers requiring me to read the other (massive) documents again.

Fully agree Mr Solicitor, please let me know know when you are available to provide the guidance whether by call or written summary. 

--would be my response. 

AskAsk

solicitors rely on you to read through the documents and understand them and raise queries where appropriate.  how is a lay man supposed to understand all the legal stuff.  most of the stuff are written in legal terminology, intentional to make solicitors sound important and necessary and to cause confusion unless you were a legal bod.

the law should be changed to make everything legal be written in clear english and none of this old english nonsense should be used at all.

it is daunting OP to have to go through all of that and to understand what it is about if you are not used to buying and selling a property.  and when things go wrong, they will blame you for not raising the issues with them before you agreed to purchase or sell.

they should provide a final letter / report of advice, where they are supposed to point out all the relevant information in the property deed and documents, but they don't always cover everything in my experience and you really do have to spend the time to go through everything and satisfy yourself, which is not easy when it comes to outdated property deeds.

look for this report, which will be a letter from the solicitor addressed directly to you and read that carefully.  when i got one of these long document dump recently, the final solicitor report was not even there and I had to ask for it!

EssexHebridean

Have you had the report on title yet? That is the document that should draw your attention to anything which may be of concern. 

While it is the solicitor's role to advise on the legal aspects, they can't do things like confirm that plans show the property that you believe you are purchasing, as that is for you as the client and purchaser to confirm. Also as mentioned, things like the lease - one person might be completely unphased by a clause saying they may not hang washing on their balcony, or have a dog, or fit laminate flooring - meanwhile you might have a dog, no tumble dryer and have a phobia of carpets! Most of what you will have been sent currently is probably not "legal information" as such - it will be the same documents that you might get sent yourself as a leaseholder, so if you are going to purchase the property it will probably be as well that you understand  them! 

Read through - do it 10 pages at a time if needed. If getting it printed helps, ask them to do that for you. Anything you are unsure of, or need explaining, note - then once you are done ask for a telephone appointment to run through everything. 

Section62

AskAsk said:

solicitors rely on you to read through the documents and understand them and raise queries where appropriate.  how is a lay man supposed to understand all the legal stuff.  most of the stuff are written in legal terminology, intentional to make solicitors sound important and necessary and to cause confusion unless you were a legal bod.

the law should be changed to make everything legal be written in clear english and none of this old english nonsense should be used at all.
...

The problem with 'clear english' is it can often be ambiguous - legal terminology and phrasing has evolved to avoid that, not to make solicitors sound important.

Also, if you legislate to ban words like "demesne" and insist on a plain language version instead then you'll probably end up with longer and less digestible legal documents which is pretty much the opposite of what (I think) you were setting out to achieve.

Given nearly everyone has access to the internet these days, it isn't difficult to tap the "old english nonsense" into google and discover what it really means.

IANAL

Martico

Nice acronym, Section62 

incus432

Section62 said:

The problem with 'clear english' is it can often be ambiguous - legal terminology and phrasing has evolved to avoid that, not to make solicitors sound important.

I challenge anyone to defend this verbiage. At least the meaning is reasonably clear in this case.