The time to complete is relevant to cashflow - Solicitors normally only get paid at the very end of lengthy transactions that take months or even years to complete. Rent and wages etc etc have to be paid in the meantime. Solicitors practice normally have a large overdraft with the bank due to the amount of unbilled work in progress. The bank will tolerate this due to the client account which shows a healthy balance.
A conveyance is hours of work in any event, its going to add up to a minimum of 4 hours, if it becomes protracted it could double.
If you are having a Will drafted make sure a time served Solicitor who specialises in Wills & Trusts does it for you, not a paralegal or inexperienced Solicitor. In most firms it will be a Solicitor who attends upon you and does the drafting so Wills are generally unprofitable.
You’re introducing cashflow but you asked about profit on the fees for conveyancing.
And the lag on payment at the end of transactions is a continuous process - so while the job you’re working on might take say 6 months to be paid, this month you’re getting paid for the jobs completed x months ago.
It’s interesting that people are very happy and quick to denigrate lawyers, but most would be pleased if their kids went into law as it’s seen as a solid profession.
I do have sympathy with people who go into law, have to do loads of expensive training but then eschew the Magic Circle gravy train to try to do work that actually helps people; they get surprisingly little money.
We have basically moved into an era where the vast majority of people have no sensible recourse to the law themselves. Unless covered by some kind of insurance (car/home etc), the removal of legal aid means that nobody can afford it.
I recently discussed a legal issue with a lawyer; he said that I had a good case, probably better than 50:50, but the costs of bringing the case would erode much of the benefits of winning, and the costs of losing would be disastrous to me. My best option would be to take the case myself, and hope that the other side just settle to avoid fees and hassle. My chances of winning would then be very low. I’ve decided not to bother.
My grandfather was a solicitor and for a while ran a decent size firm in the centre of Birmingham. Later on he established his own practice and at that time he bought the first computer I had the chance to play with (some Apple I think), sometime in the early 80s and led to me begging my parents for a ZX Spectrum.
I learned how to program on this and helped him integrate it into his business to do all kinds of things, on one hand storage of records and on the other basic management accounts and invoicing tasks.
He made a lot of money, albeit over 30 years ago - perhaps it was more lucrative, or maybe he was also a talented businessman as well as solicitor.
I think that pretty much all the big law firms get in external business management now - they have realised that getting one of their top people to do it is a shit idea - they aren’t very good at it, and it means they can’t do their day job. Sensible.
Most NHS only doctors yes. However those in private companies are sharp as anyone when it comes to making and more importantly, keeping their money. GPs fall somewhere between the two!
I’m still tempted to become a solicitor.
Might take a wander down to the magistrates court this week to see if there are any cases i fancy having a go at
Remember to write everything down, and then proceed to lose your notes and expect client to reproduce them for you. Make more careful notes on how long all this takes for billing purposes
