Letter: conveyancing delays

Shakespeare’s Hamlet posed the question: “Who would bear the whips and scorns of time… the law’s delay?” In conveyancing matters the answer appears to be the clients.

In two of my recent cases where there was delay on the part of the selling solicitors, resulting in serious problems coming to light only days before settlement, clients on one side or other of the transactions quite literally had their nerves put through a wringer, and considerable extra work was necessary which could have been avoided altogether with a minimal amount of effort on the part of the selling solicitors.

I don’t know what other solicitors feel, but when a transaction is going badly wrong on me I find it difficult to apply my mind to other files.

It is beyond my comprehension as to why some firms delay ordering up titles until after missives are concluded. The logic of this escapes me altogether.

One of my former employers pointed out that it is the clients who pay our wages, and never was a truer word spoken. With all of this computerised sophistication which we have available, surely some sort of reminder system could be devised to flag up situations where titles or loan redemption figures etc, which have been requested, are overdue. Failure to monitor these matters inevitably leads to “meltdown” situations, with the clients left to wonder exactly what it is that they are paying their fees for.