LEEDS DAY LLP

Absolutely diabolical and would avoid at all costs. My solicitor has been trying to deal with Leeds Day for six months to arrange a simple lease assignment for my business. They have:

1. Turned this into a protracted and unnecessary negotiation (it should a straightforward process), trying to remove the security of tenure rights under the Landlords and Tenants act from the lease.

2. Attempted to increase my ongoing liability for the lease from two years to 15 years!

3. Gave incorrect and misleading information to their client, the landlord. At least when we identified this issue the Trainee Solicitor dealing with us up to that point ‘left’ Leeds Day the next day.

4. Presented us with invoices in excess of the undertakings given and when requested they couldn’t or wouldn’t substantiate them. When challenged further on this they simply reduced their invoice back to the value of the original undertaking. They have been asked on several occasions to explain their costs but have failed to do so.

5. The ‘supervising’ solicitor who took over expressed surprise when she looked at their file and found 281 items, even though she had been on copy of all of them! That was back in June and there have probably been about another 100 email exchanges on it since then and they still haven’t confirmed they are ready to complete.

6. Sent documents to the Landlord for signing that were incorrect and had to be returned, causing further delay. Denied having any knowledge of this on two occasions and finally sent the corrected paperwork back to the landlord two weeks later! We still don’t have confirmation that they are in receipt of the signed documents even though the landlord has confirmed they were completed and sent.

7. Have consistently ignored chasing emails from my solicitor.

This is just a summary. I have lodged a complaint with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (they are members) as I have email and documented evidence to substantiate all of the above.

It's to really quite difficult to describe how poor the probate 'service' my 90 year old mother received from Leeds Day after my father died in 2021. Instead of dealing with 1 solicitor, we had to deal with 3 (they kept leaving) restarting the discussion each time. Instead of taking the agreed 6 months, it took over 3 years. Instead of costing £3-4k they tried to justify over £11k. It was only after years of complaints was I able to drag them in front of the Legal Ombudsman who ruled in my mothers favour. Even then they managed to spin their 'reduced' bill to be more than originally agreed. Their delays quite literally cost my mother tens of thousands because she was not able to sell assets at a good time. When Leeds Day charge more than £200 / hour it seems perfectly reasonable for my mother and farther to have expected better. Absolutely appealing on every level.

We've had the need for a professional, good value solicitor to help with a couple of different commercial property transactions over the past few months. Suzanne Folbigg at Leeds Day in St Neots has been highly effective, speedy and, most importantly, communicative at all stages of the processes. Would highly recommend

I first encountered this firm 6 years ago with the purchase of my first property. And wow! I may as well have done it myself! No comms, i was constantly chasing, bill was nearly £1k over the estimate (granted it was an estimate but that’s ridiculous), i was constantly chasing and wasn’t a set person dealing with the purchase. It was a shambles! Second time around i was forced to use this firm due to the lenders we had to go with. Comms were a little better this time and we had a designated solicitor! HOWEVER. It still took almost 9months to complete, Oh not to mention it was a straightforward no chain purchase, and after the bill was settled i was contacted, surprise surprise, to say that there was an oversight and i owed them money!!!!! For the amount i paid this service should have been on point and it simply wasn’t. Absolute joke! Buying a house is one of the single most stressful things to do on the planet to then have your solicitors make it 10x worse! So in short you want a decent firm for a relatively smooth purchase oh and to bill you correctly with no hidden charges DO NOT use this firm!

Almost a year after buying my new house through Leeds Day, I have absolutely no paperwork relating to the purchase, I have no confirmation that my house has been registered with Land Registry and my emails since Christmas have been ignored. I strongly recommend using another company for house purchasing in particular.