I am a solicitor and I am sitting here in my office surrounded by "clear cut and non problematic sale" files. Not. Not a single, solitary one. Every one has an issue and my job is to identify it , address it , fix it and move on. Never mind the "chain" cases where you might have up to four transactions all dependent on everyone doing their bit, doing the decent thing and being honest and straightforward. The selfishness I see on a daily basis is unbelievable - its all about "me"!
August is a particularly bad month - everyone wants to get in before the schools start - I have five of these transactions and not a signed Contract in any one of them. Two weeks to go.
Any conveyancing file probably eats up about 40 billable hours in a solicitor's office and even if the work is primarily being done by support staff, its still a lot of time.
Most of my clients are repeat clients and they'd rather pay me to do the work than to trawl around for the cheapest possible price. Doing that quick trawl, I can see fees as low as €695 plus VAT.
Personally, I don't see how anyone can operate an office or offer any sort of proper professional service based on that sort of fee.
But there's the deal: use the cheapest possible solicitor's office or pay, what I would call, a realistic price for a proper service.
Its a win-win for any client- even the cheapest solicitor has to have Professional Indemnity Insurance so even if they make a complete mess of it, it will, usually, get sorted eventually and at some considerable grief for the client.
I charge €2000 plus VAT for any usual conveyancing transaction and more for anything awkward, problematic or troublesome.
I get clients inviting me to "match" the cheapest quote as if, in some way, they are doing me a favour. Most regular posters on here will know what my answer is
mf