SCJ SOLICITORS

If you are in the process of buying a property and you see SCJ and the name Samantha as solicitor, you avoid. This solicitor and manager/owner of this businness is shady,she intentionally ignores all legal enquiries when you are in the process of buying a property, and only answers to things that bring her money. She collaborates with questionable vendors. This business exhibits total lack in duty of care and is enmeshed in weird dealings and nefarious business.

We hired Samantha and her team twice for our auction property purchase, and we couldn’t be happier with their service! They were always easy to reach, incredibly responsive to all our questions, and everything was completed promptly and smoothly. Their professionalism and trustworthiness truly stood out. We would absolutely use their services again and highly recommend them. Thank you so much!

One of the Worst Law Firms I’ve Ever Dealt With – Avoid at All Costs!

If I could give this law firm zero stars, I would. From the start, my experience with SCJ was nothing short of a nightmare. They are utterly incompetent, unprofessional, and seem to care more about draining your bank account than actually providing any real legal assistance.

To add insult to injury, they hit me with surprise charges and fees that were never discussed upfront. They’ll nickel and dime you for every possible service, even when those services are subpar or completely unnecessary. When I questioned these charges, I was met with defensiveness and an utter lack of accountability.

Save yourself the time, money, and stress – DO NOT hire SCJ. They are incompetent, untrustworthy, and a complete waste of time.

The staff were misleading and a group of fraudsters with a complete disregard for anyone but themselves.

They did not respect the completion date that was given by the auction house either.

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!

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!