Even having thirty five years’ experience, it is still the case that every day is a school day! There is no way we can know everything about conveyancing.
And then we have the clients. Google is a wonderful thing if used correctly but many clients look up what an indemnity policy may be and end up going down the rabbit hole! The friends in the pub always have an opinion about how conveyancing should be done. And then there is the family member who is a solicitor, albeit in a different area of law.
I am acting for a client whose uncle is a solicitor; his area of specialism is property litigation. He has seen the things that can and do go wrong. Prior to receiving the contract documents, he had already obtained a copy of the title and the lease and sent me two pages of proposed enquiries. I wanted to do my own report before I considered his comments… I then received a further five pages of proposed enquiries!
The enquiries were interesting and were clearly based around the purchase of leasehold properties which had gone wrong and where issues were identified after completion.
The difficulty I had was how to frame those enquiries with the other conveyancer. I did not want him to think that I was asking unnecessary enquiries as clearly those enquiries were important to the uncle and I needed to be sure that the answers were sufficient so that it did not elicit further questions.
The buyer wanted me to copy him into everything I sent – so he could send onto his uncle – therefore I had to make sure that I covered everything. It was very tricky. I decided that I would speak with the seller’s conveyancer and explain my predicament and that the source of the enquiries was not necessarily me but that those enquiries had to be answered precisely.
And that was the hardest part! The seller’s conveyancer had no direct telephone number and I could not seem to speak with him!
I emailed and asked if there was a convenient time to have a chat only to receive the response that he did not take calls and any enquiries should just be put in an email. I then knew that the enquiries were not going to be received happily!
What would you do?
This is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. Read more in Today’s Conveyancer every week.
2 responses
I would certainly start by asking myself, “By going down the given route, will I be able to act in my client’s best interests?” It has to be personal, and your client needs to know that. As matters stand, you have already been warned by the email response. You know then that the time it will take is going to be longer than the client requires. Because you are also buying on behalf of the uncle, asking unnecessary questions means almost a double dose of extension. While I like to be able to meet everone’s needs, some people fall outside of that.
If it were me, I would give all that detail to the client and ask if they are happy to proceed under those conditions. I would then be inclined to advise of a price increase if they still wanted you to act for them. If they say yes to all of that, you know what is going to happen, so too will they.
Your choice of what to do. Your client has the opportunity to ask who they choose to do the conveyancing work. You could honestly say, given the circumstances, you are not able to act in their best interests. You could then pass the responsibility back to the uncle.
I think I probably would have walked away. I think what the uncle and client is asking is unreasonable and beyond the scope of a standard conveyance. I think it has the potential very quickly to blow up into a mess with sellers solicitor becoming upset, sellers becoming upset, agents getting involved and it landing on your plate. The uncle then might have choice comments if the enquiries were not answered or not answered to his liking. I think the uncle should know and understand the predicament it is placing you in. I think a case like that would need to be dealt with by a senior associate or a partner of a law firm. I would also mark it as high risk as with the uncle being a litigator and involved, the potential for a negligence case has risen by quite some distance and various mitigation measures would need to be put in place. Not to mention the fees; I’d be tempted to raise them significantly for all of the additional correspondence and effectively extra client.