JonW
A complete and utter disgrace. Avoid like the plague
I found Cooklaw staff to be lazy, devious and, I believe, instrumental in ruining my flat sale and house purchase. Their laziness became apparent early on when they didn't even bother to acknowledge receipt of important documents I sent. They didn't appear to be doing any work - I had to keep pestering them and was forced to get in touch with builders/management myself to speed up the process. In the last seven weeks before my sale / purchase fell through, I wrote several emails and called 6-7 times before actually talking to my solicitor, Richard Wells, who seemed to be going out of his way to avoid me. There was basically a 7-week period of no contact from them despite me contacting them by email or phone in total more than ten times. The builder I was buying a house from (Keepmoat) pulled out after about 4 months (so I lost my deposit and a 5% £9,000 discount) - I wrote to Richard at Cooklaw to tell him this important news and received NO reply. I wrote some days later and said I’d identified a possible new place to buy to ask if he still wanted to represent me and again received NO reply. I rang several times and each time Richard was out or ‘in a meeting’. Then, by the time I finally got through to him, my buyer pulled out because of all the delays. Richard showed zero interest or sympathy at all even when the sale fell through. One other puzzling thing happened. The estate agent organising my flat sale told me that Cooklaw had told my buyer’s solicitor that my building was due to have work carried out on it and that this was a reason for the delay in the completion of my sale. I urgently called the management company and they confirmed that there was no such work planned. None whatsoever. Did Cooklaw inform my buyer’s solicitor for no reason? To sabotage the sale? I’ll never know unless they suddenly decide to be honest. Why did Cooklaw act this way? I have narrowed it down to three possibilities: 1/ pure laziness on a deal which was at the lower end of the spectrum financially, 2/ professional incompetence from start to finish, 3/ deliberate incompetence. I suspect it might be all three. Whatever you do, do not use Cooklaw solicitors, and consider carefully when a builder like Keepmoat suggests you use their preferred solicitor. You might end up like me, stranded, frustrated and now about £18,000 poorer. I honestly can’t believe Cooklaw are in business.
