Here, we're always looking for new ways to increase efficiency while decreasing costs, our procedure for confirming details of the sales we handle is to e-mail the solicitors in question. Hardly rocket science, I grant you, but recently we were informed by one 'well established' firm of solicitors that should we wish them to act on any information we conveyed to them, that information would have to be written down on paper and sent in a letter. No doubt their office procedures were set in stone, literally, sometime in the last millennium.
We were told, completely straightfaced, that the solicitor in question simply 'doesn't have e-mail'. From that then, it makes sense to assume that he regards the instrument with which he can speak to people he can't see - that thing on his desk next to his quill pen, the one that beeps on occasion - with a great deal of suspicion and hostility. It's the shock of the new.Should any of us survive until the exchange of contracts actually takes place, no doubt we will receive confirmation by something as modern as a telegram. Such an attitude is not a rarity among High Street solicitors. In fact, today we received a letter sent by first-class post from one legal firm to inform us that they had sent contracts to the solicitors acting for our buyer. That was in addition to another letter sent by first-class post from the same legal firm at the same time to let us know that they had received the e-mail we had sent them some time previously. Spot the irony. We can't help wondering why they were unable to combine those two pieces of information in the same first-class mail envelope, or even typed both into a single e-mail to save time and money.
So is it any wonder that antiquated - I do apologise, I meant to write 'old-fashioned' - legal firms all too often charge a fortune to undertake the conveyance of a property sale and take far too long to complete it? To provide a more efficient, faster and cheaper service, online estate agents have embraced current technology and have, unlike more traditional agencies, taken to the technology like the proverbial duck to water.
This would improve their performance and also cut their fees down to a more appropriate level. But then again, their insistence on staying firmly rooted in the 20th century could just be a ploy to keep on charging 20th century fees.
It would seem that High Street estate agents and old-fashioned solicitors are taking a leaf out of each other's book by clinging on to unnecessary multiple branch offices that cost a great deal to run, and passing on those costs to their customers in the form of ridiculously high, and often unjustified, fees.
We were told, completely straightfaced, that the solicitor in question simply 'doesn't have e-mail'. From that then, it makes sense to assume that he regards the instrument with which he can speak to people he can't see - that thing on his desk next to his quill pen, the one that beeps on occasion - with a great deal of suspicion and hostility. It's the shock of the new.Should any of us survive until the exchange of contracts actually takes place, no doubt we will receive confirmation by something as modern as a telegram. Such an attitude is not a rarity among High Street solicitors. In fact, today we received a letter sent by first-class post from one legal firm to inform us that they had sent contracts to the solicitors acting for our buyer. That was in addition to another letter sent by first-class post from the same legal firm at the same time to let us know that they had received the e-mail we had sent them some time previously. Spot the irony. We can't help wondering why they were unable to combine those two pieces of information in the same first-class mail envelope, or even typed both into a single e-mail to save time and money.
So is it any wonder that antiquated - I do apologise, I meant to write 'old-fashioned' - legal firms all too often charge a fortune to undertake the conveyance of a property sale and take far too long to complete it? To provide a more efficient, faster and cheaper service, online estate agents have embraced current technology and have, unlike more traditional agencies, taken to the technology like the proverbial duck to water.
This would improve their performance and also cut their fees down to a more appropriate level. But then again, their insistence on staying firmly rooted in the 20th century could just be a ploy to keep on charging 20th century fees.
It would seem that High Street estate agents and old-fashioned solicitors are taking a leaf out of each other's book by clinging on to unnecessary multiple branch offices that cost a great deal to run, and passing on those costs to their customers in the form of ridiculously high, and often unjustified, fees.
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