Client care

Two law firms have been facing multiple claims worth nearly £6m from disgruntled investors who lost money on hotels and student accommodation that were never built.

An agreement between solicitors, surveyors and estate agents in Northern Ireland to improve the conveyancing process could be a template for England and Wales.

HM Land Registry launched its new digital local land charges register last week, which will cut the time it takes to get results from days or weeks to seconds.

The accountancy regulator has decided not to force its firms that provide reserved probate services to publish their fees – unlike the legal regulators.

Law firms are still failing to respond to customer enquiries properly, with a mystery shopper survey showing a “dismally poor” performance in respect of follow-up calls.

A significant proportion of home owners do not trust the law firms they are referred to by estate agents, a survey has found.

Over a third of home movers would be prepared to pay more for a “premium customer service” from their conveyancer, according to new research that also charts how local solicitors have lost ground to licensed conveyancers and online operations. It said that many conveyancing firms were not responding quickly enough to “21st century mindsets”.

A fifth of those buying leaseholds do not recall their solicitors giving them key information such as the length of the lease remaining, service charges and ground rent, according to research commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. But overall, conveyancing clients were generally happy with the service they received.

High street solicitors are losing out to specialist conveyancing businesses in capturing clients, new research has shown, but all lawyers still have much to improve on client communication. More than a third of clients would even consider paying more for a premium service, it found.

Only 11% of small businesses consider solicitors to be good value for money, and most choose not to use them when faced by a legal problem, seeing them as a last resort, according to major new research. It also found that the annual cost of small businesses’ legal problems to the UK economy to be roughly £40bn.