The Southend estate agents, Gilbert & Rose, recommended JS Law to me. They had, they said, a ‘special’ relationship that would make my conveyance – the sale and purchase of two properties – so much easier and straightforward. Oh, if only …
If Gilbert & Rose and J S Law, do have a 'special relatonship' it's especially bad.
I’d sold four houses previously, using a local solicitor, and never really encountered many problems. The selling point of JS Law, unlike the traditional way of doing business, is that all transactions and payments are done via an online portal – their ‘eway’ dashboard – where all the details of the conveyancing are assembled. But you are assigned a ‘handler’, a real, human, solicitor who you can talk to via email, or telephone, if you need to
Now, this might seem like a good idea. Well, maybe, if you have the time to spare to learn how the portal works. It can take a while and doesn’t have the most user-friendly design. In addition, every time a transaction takes place, a message pops up on your phone, declaring, somewhat alarmingly, that: ‘YOU HAVE TWELVE TASKS TO ATTEND TO’ which, until you get used to it, prompts you to put down whatever you’re doing to find out what it is that might be so urgent. This is really, really annoying and the last thing you want in the middle of a busy day.
While I was willing to give it a go, I’m afraid I just came to hate the online approach. It’s no substitute for a flesh and blood solicitor, who you might be able to actually talk to. Which brings me to what really bugs me about JS Law: the poor standard of service I received when I did want to talk to my assigned solicitor, Jade Moran. Communication was just, simply, poor and that’s a polite way of putting it. Emails went unanswered for days – in one case, a whole week. When they were answered, replies were cursory, brief, badly written, in poor English and unpunctuated. It felt that at least a whole 2 seconds had been spent on the response. And, if I’d raised several points in an email, annoyingly, they weren’t all answered in the reply. Which meant that I had to write yet another email repeating the same points. In the end, if I needed to convey or get information from my buyer or the people I was buying from, I wrote my own emails and asked Jade Moran to forward them to their solicitors. It was the only way I could ensure that my wishes were being carried out as I wanted and in a proper manner. On one occasion, a financial statement, a rather important document, was incorrect.
So why didn’t I phone to ask my questions? Well, you can give it a go – after all, JS Law do make a big deal of how easy it is to contact them by phone – but, guess what, in six months of doing business with them, not one call I tried to make actually went through. Their lines are perpetually engaged. Or perpetually ignored. Overall, the impression I had of my solicitor was that she was probably overworked, highly stressed, with a substantial workload of business apart from mine – or just not very interested. During one of her absences, I had the misfortune to talk to one Anthony Smalley, who was taking care of my case. I had a number of urgent questions that I needed answered. Mr Smalley seemed slightly outraged that I had the temerity to ask my questions and seemed incapable, in his reluctant responses, of raising his answers above the monosyllabic.
My solicitor was also acting for someone else in my chain, which struck me as rather odd.
In the end, JS Law did eventually complete my conveyancing successfully. It’s clear, though, that it’s a purely functional service. If it’s a stress-free, personal experience you’re after, with efficient, full, and helpful attendance on your business, steer well clear.
Get yourself a local, friendly solicitor, who is happy to give you their time and provide the personal help and reassurance you need if you’re buying or selling property.
