SCJ Solicitors

The most unresponsive and terrible solicitor firm I had ever used.
Initially I had a land to sell at the auction and so I did my research and found that many people use this firm for selling at auctions.
Great! I thought, they must be very experienced at this and so I decided to use them. What a terrible mistake that was!
Samantha - the only solicitor in the firm is extremely slow and unresponsive. If you have any questions or concerns you might as well forget it. You will either have to wait days, weeks to even to hear back or most often your calls and emails just get ignored.
You would think calling them to chase queries would make it better? No such luck here. You can't get through to her on the phone, so the best you will get is receptionist promising to pass the query to Samantha, then you don't hear from them, call them next day, same thing - no response, and then maybe from 3rd time you chase them your issue will get resolved or answered.
The amount of chasing I had to do to solve issues was unbelievable. So much of my time wasted on the phone and emails!

Just to give you an example, in my first sale of land I made it clear from day one that I needed to have searches done first thing to make sure they are ready for auction, chased this many times and I was assured that this was done. Samantha told me that they have it and they would put it up for auction. A week before auction I noticed the searches are still not there, chased Samantha several times and made sure she would put searches up for auction. What do you know? After making sure that searches would be ready for auction many many times and her telling me this would be done? You are right, she completely failed to put searches up for auction and then ignored all my queries about it. Unbelievable.

Unfortunately my first sale of land fell through and I had to stick to SCJ Solicitors for the following sale as well. This time most of my queries were outright ignored, no matter how many times I chased them.
Even after successful completion the money didn't arrive to my account on time and I had to chase them for more than a week before I received the money to my account. Did I mention that they quoted me the wrong number at first and then I was quite puzzled when they transferred me less money that they promised? Turned out they forgot to include searches the first time around.

To be completely fair even though they are extremely slow and unresponsive they have good sides as well.
First, they dont charge you until you complete the transaction with them.
Second, they are probably the cheapest solicitors to go with, £500 + VAT for the services. Considering they had to put up the same land for sale at the auction twice for me, this is probably the cheapest rate you are going to get anywhere.
Third they have eventually completed their work although I had to be the driving force behind it (not sure this is a positive).
And fourth, because they charge a lot of money for the sellers cost from the buyer, as a seller you do get a bit of extra money on top of what you sell for (1.5K in my case)

However I also had a chance to complete a very similar transaction with a different solicitor (another land I was selling) and oh my god, what a difference it was! Prompt responses, all issues sorted immediately, searches ordered straight away and delivered on time...

Personally, I feel it is not worth your time and effort to go for SCJ Solicitors even though they are cheaper then the rest and you get you a bit of money on top.
The only time you could use them is probably if you want to hand off a straightforward issue to them and then forget about it. Gof forbid if you run into issues.
Overall, SCJ Solicitors are terribly slow, unhelpful, unresponsive and sometimes make mistakes. But they are also cheap and will eventually get it done if you are willing to spend a lot of time chasings things up. Maybe even without chasing! But I never had the nerve to let the reins go completely to find out. I guess you get what you pay for.
In other words - Stay away!

An amazing service, very professional and I could get hold of them any time I needed. I had to liaise with Chester Roberts one of the company legal assistants. She was very proactive and helped to speed up the completion of the auction property I bought. Thanks for all your help and support. I will be instucting them again for another purchase in the nearest future.

This company supports contracts that are designed to charge excessive fees against novice buyers at auctions. Small prints that let them charge a buyer "sellers' legal cost" of £4750 for a piece of land that was advertised for £1000. They used very aggressive legal jargon to enforce payment. They are regulated by the SRA(Solicitors Regulation Authority). They effectively used the law to enforce what amounts to a "boiler room" tactic and got the £4750 they want. When I said I would report them. They advised me that they are regulated to enforce contracts, be it what it is (a rip off contract against a novice buyer). I agree with comment from Ahmet earlier on this review section, complaining to them is not good; they even suggested the SRA would not look at my point of view since I am not their clients as I am on the receiving end of their enforcement of excessive fees on behalf of their clients. I suspect there may be a racket of dubious auctioneers, sellers and solicitors. The authority may be interested to look into this before more unsuspecting buyers get trapped and the public start losing trust in the authority. They probably would use their legal power to label this review as "revenge review" to get Google to remove it. I hope this is as useful for the authority to research as it is for public information. It is not meant to be a "revenge" review. If I am approached by the authority I have evidence.
Be very aware if their name appears as solicitors for the sellers. Watch out for the sellers' legal fee in their auction contract and if you are not sure, stay away from their association.
Another question is why are they getting so many bad reviews? Can they take legal actions as threatened against all bad reviewers?

This is lower than 3rd class firm. I wish I could give them less than 1 star. Extremely poor work ethics. All the staff from bottom to top is greedy while customer service is not even at the bottom of their list.

Useless and rude. They don't answer calls, emails and have failed to deal with the purchase of land through auction for whats almost 12 months. Further legal action will be taken and the costs recovered from SCJ solicitors. My advice is do not use them and if you are buying and SCJ are involved then pull out before wasting money.

One piece of advice, to not use this company. Extremely unprofessional!!! They delay the selling process of a house. Make an absurd amount of queries that are not necessary. They will charge you an arm and a leg for every little thing. Lenders solicitors and buyers solicitors will tell you the same. They are the worst solicitors I have ever used and I have bought a few properties. They even send letters to you of missed completion even thou you have completed. Just terrible. Avoid at all costs!

Bit surprised at the poor reviews. Maybe I was lucky as this firm were acting for a corporate client buying a property through my agency and whom they have clearly acted for many times but all the same, they exchanged contracts on a purchase within 3.5 hours of receiving the contract!! Would have been quicker if my vendor had not been in a meeting and couldnt authorise exchange sooner. Absolutely incredible.

I would not recommend this solicitor. The member of staff we dealt with communication on the phone was aggressive and her verbal communication equally poor and antagonist. On a number of occasions when phone calls were made to this person they refused to take the call ‘on the phone’. I’ve dealt with a number of solicitors but this company is absolutely appalling!!! Even complaining to the senior solicitor had no impact. I’d advise you to research carefully before considering this company.