Thread: Conveyancing - Solicitors or Conveyancers ??

I have used both when buying and selling properties. Conveyancers charge about 600 - 700 depending on whether it was a purchase or sale. Never had a problem with them. Solicitor charge about 3 times as much and as far as I was concerned the quality of work was the same.
On my most recent exercise of sale I rang a local conveyancer and asked them straight up - why should I use you instead of someone else. Well she gave me a good answer, had done it for 20 years with a law firm and she got the job.

We used a local conveyancing firm when buying the house in Kal and were very happy with the service provided.

At the moment, we are in the process of selling a house in the southern end of Adelaide following a death in the family. Because of issues with the will and probate etc we have been forced to use the solicitor who is handling the will. While not wishing to generalise, this solicitor would have to be the most incompetent bumbling fool I think that I have ever come across - in ANY profession. The number of errors made on paperwork submitted to the probate officer, resulting in arranging corrections, re-issuing of the death certificate, and re-submission of paperwork is simply unbelievable. Most of these have been around things like spelling mistakes (Ron - this bloke needs your help), incorrect names (he got my wife's name wrong in the paperwork - I didn't think you could stuff up the spelling of "Mary"), incorrect addresses (twice - once for our address in Kalgoorlie and once for the address of the nursing home at which the wife's father passed away). This has been going on for more than eight months now, and we still don't know when things will be finalised.

The wife - normally a fairly quiet and reserved person - got up him on the phone recently and told him that he was an incompetent fool. He replied in writing stating that, in his opinion, he is very competent in these matters having had years of experience.

Suffice to say that formal complaints with dates, details etc have now been lodged with the senior partner of his law firm, and with the bar association by both ourselves and the family who have agreed to buy the house and are also being mucked around no end. Fortunately the purchaser is a Police Officer, and has been able to provide some good contacts in SA on where to lodge these complaints.

After this experience, I will never use a solicitor again unless absolutely necessary, and even then it is someone who I know personally or who has been strongly recommended by someone I know and trust. Over-paid, bludging wastes of space if you ask me. In any other line of work, these mongrels wouldn't survive a month.