1) Creative vs Standard Legal Thinking
In the United Kingdom, the conveyancing system has remained very static and traditional over the last 60 years. There have been standard ways of buying and selling residential property that most solicitors have trained for and repeated throughout their career. With the introduction of lease options, delayed completions and instalment contracts, only a small portion of them have adapted.
2) Legal Liability Insurance
A primary concern in doing anything different is to safeguard themselves about venturing into “unchartered waters” and protect their legal liability insurance, due to putting themselves at risk of any type of claim from a disgruntled client for whatever reason. Hence their cautious nature!
3) Who Your Lawyer Represents
When engaging a British legal practitioner for a property purchase with a mortgage, you will find s/he represents not only you, but the mortgagee and their legal firm (remember that ever-present legal-liability insurance policy). Their task can appear like they are trying to eliminate all possible risks.
4) Offer Legal Documents
You really don’t want a solicitor of be researching and preparing the documentation from scratch. Unless you are fully versed and can explain their legalese-type questions, offer the contact details of a lawyer that can explain and offer the documentation that s/he has already used previously.
5) Business Advice vs Legal Advice
A lawyer is essentially there to ensure that everyone is following the law, but don’t be surprised to hear about them also giving their own business advice. This could be due to unfamiliarity, but they won’t admit to it. If the lawyer is concurrently acting on behalf of a mortgagee at the time, you can expect s/he to notify the lender for even the most minute of matters. You may wish to hold off on your actions until after that period, just to reduce delays and questioning that can arise.
WORKING WITH LAWYERS:
The more you work with lawyers, the more familiar you will become with what they are looking out for. They often want an inordinate number of searches for the most obscure of reasons to safeguard their legal-liability insurance. You can decline this and sign a form to waiver any responsibility. You must keep yourself informed during proceedings where both sets of lawyers reach any stalemate. P.S. Solicitors are prone to taking school-holiday leave, leaving the transaction to come to a halt.
