This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
I used to be a solicitor.
Used to, because when I saw it was £50 a year to remain on the Non-Practising Roll I could not see that it was worth the cost even after nearly 30 years qualified.
When I first joined the family business after a decade working in law firms, I did most of our legal work and then slowly realised that others could do it quicker, or better, so over time I increasingly instructed lawyers and coordinated.
To begin with, being a lawyer felt like an essential lubricant and de-risking commercial safeguard. Now I think lawyers are parasites on the commercial process, adding cost and — often worse — delays of questionable necessity.
The temptation, and very often the commercial imperative, is to try to bypass these pedantic, detail-creating professionals. As well as saving costs, deals are often concluded quicker.
The rise of AI and subscription libraries for document precedents mean business executives confident enough can produce paperwork recording commercial intention as well as any lawyer.
Many lawyers are horrified by this, obviously. Litigators are not, however. Whilst most contracts are never referred to once completed and most arguments are resolvable by common sense and bargaining power, litigators do love the obfuscation generated by a badly recorded bargain or one agreed merely verbally.
Since under English law the only contracts that have to be in writing relate to land sales, it is safe to say that they also adore it when an unwritten contract degenerates into argument. Litigators are never short of work.
However, despite these risks it is often worthwhile not using lawyers, especially if you trust the other side a little. Counterparties often dislike paying legal costs as much as you do. Transaction size is also relevant — if a deal is worth less than 5 per cent of turnover it may pay to not have lawyers gumming it up.
Judgement is contextual and sometimes the worst of it can be to involve solicitors. Their main concerns are not yours but often the academic purity of the transaction and whether doing things differently or quicker will adversely affect their professional indemnity insurance.
I am wiser and less susceptible to corporate bullshit, even that less obvious
Not to mention the monthly billing cycle. I have overheard partners mutter in corridors about extending deals artificially, to be able to charge more “due to the length and complexity of the matter”. Every law firm does this.
When younger and working for others in law firms, I recall being instructed to inform the client when a matter neared its conclusion, either to request money or to learn where it should be sent.
You did not bother the client with irrelevances during the matter, only what was necessary. You also dealt with things as expeditiously as possible.
Perhaps it is the lawyers I am instructing, but frequency of communication has increased. Heads of Terms, which act as the reference for lawyers to document a deal, used to take half a day, but now take several.
When selling property, there are several hundred Common Professional Standard Enquiries to answer and send to the buyer. As a solicitor I used to answer most of these before asking the client about those I could not. Now I seem to be sent all of them by my conveyancer unanswered.
Recently a solicitor sent me a draft sale contract to approve before sending it to the other side. I replied that if he was not able to draft a contract in accordance with the Heads of Terms, did I need a different solicitor? I do not recall ever asking a client to approve my drafting and neither did my then colleagues.
The length of time matters take has certainly extended, even as the rest of business has become more digital and faster. I have bought and sold hundreds of properties and what used to take three months now takes five — even without mortgage finance.
I realise that I am now grumpy, middle-aged, impatient and cynical. I am also wiser and less susceptible to corporate bullshit, even that less obvious than the ESG and DEI lies. When I ask for an update as to why a deal is taking so long to complete and receive an email several days later with an attachment that is a blow by blow account of which boilerplate clauses were accepted/rejected/altered, I bang my forehead upon the leather of my desk in bafflement as to why the lawyer might think I want to know all this.
The transaction-extending excuses I am so frustrated by are nothing to the latest compliance annoyances.
A law firm I have used several times in recent years (I use several — if you grant all your work to one lawyer, or one firm, things take even longer), now requires my fellow directors and me to send photographs of ourselves holding our passports every time we instruct them. Every single time.
We did this, not smiling. When the invoice arrived I waited a few days and replied stating that I was very happy to pay but required, for our internal regulatory procedures, each of their partners to email me an image of them holding their passports.
If they waste my time then I can waste theirs … but my finance director quietly pointed out that the invoice was a duplicate — we had paid the fees when we advanced the Completion Statement monies to buy the thing.
I felt a fool and retreated to Umbria to drink negronis and write this.
