Communication is key

I do feel for this guy – it’s stressful enough moving house without your own lawyer going all uncontactable.

I hope that we – as many other firms, to be fair – do better: we copy clients (and agents) in on relevant correspondence with the other conveyancers; we routinely communicate by email – or by text, if the client prefers that; we actively encourage clients to phone or drop in if they have any questions or worries; we do all we can to make the process of conveyancing as transapent and predictable as possible.

We are deliberately structured to make this easy: while all legal work is carried out by me or Jasmine – both fully qualified solicitors – the day-to-day business of keeping files up to date, keeping clients and estate agents informed, and general progress-chasing is handled by Samantha and Anne – this frees the lawyers to do the lawyering (we are kept out of the way upstairs in our little rooms) while the busy work goes on downstairs.  It also means that clients routinely deal with smiling human beings, not the semi-human creatures that lawyers can turn into.

And it works! Clients are delighted with the way they are kept up to date – on a minute-by-minute basis, where appropriate; the lawyers are happy parsing and paring their words – though Jasmine sometimes longs to see a human face, which is why she is so keen on WillAid, I think.

Other firms are encouraged to delegate the legal work as far down as they can, to reduce overheads, on a “stack it high – sell it cheap” model; the trouble with that is that clients still depend on making contact with the over-worked para-legal, and end up with the worst of both worlds. We prefer instead a “horses for courses” approach, whereby lawyers lawyer and support staff support – by which I mean, support the clients and the lawyers.