Bishop & Sewell Reviews 6

I completely agree with the other negative reviews. I used Bishop & Sewell for a will-writing service, and the entire process was incredibly frustrating. The service dragged on far longer than expected, and there were multiple errors throughout. The solicitor handling my case seemed to be unfamiliar with key details and couldn’t answer many of my basic queries. There were constant delays, and communication was poor, leaving me feeling uncertain every step of the way.

Having received the final version of the will, I have little trust that it’s been done properly or that it's fully watertight. I now need to amend my will, but after catching up on more recent reviews here on Trustpilot, I'm disappointed to see that nothing has changed since I used their services in 2023. This leaves me with no faith or confidence that they will handle my will in a way that reassures me. Given the issues I experienced, I wouldn’t recommend this firm for will-writing services, as I feel my estate planning hasn’t been dealt with the care and professionalism it deserves.

Disappointed with the service from this firm. The process to finalize my property licence took over 16 months with unnecessary delays and errors that I had to flag myself. Communication was poor, and towards the end I was asked to resolve an issue that should have been handled by the firm 'to save money'. Couldn’t agree more with these low scores.

Had a very poor experience using Charlie Davidson for the purchase of a property. His negligence in handling the matter directly caused the deal to collapse as the seller withdrew due to the excessive time taken, resulting in the loss of the property and ensuing financial damage, as well as a loss of months of my time and stress to myself.
The entire process took seven months before it collapsed, which was totally unreasonable. Throughout the whole process, the communication from Charlie was extremely poor, and at a critical point in the purchase he totally ignored all communication attempts for a month, causing additional stress.
Charlie also seemed to struggle with managing tasks in his inbox and dealing with the other party. Having reviewed the communication between both solicitors, Charlie made several errors in requests for information, did not chase issues adequately and did not pass all relevant documentation on to myself.
It would appear that Charlie was severely out of his depth with this transaction and was not being managed properly. From dealing with his manager after complaining, there appears to be a culture of mediocrity across the whole conveyancing team. Once I took matters into my own hands, I was able to get information from the seller within one week that Charlie and his manager had claimed they were unable to get despite them trying for over three months. Indeed, the seller also advised me to make a complaint to Bishop & Sewell due to the delays their poor handling of the matter were causing.
Bishop & Sewell charge higher fees than many other firms, however they do not provide any value for this. Their work was some of the poorest quality professional services I have ever received. I would strongly advise that if you want your property deal to complete and be dealt with in a professional manner, you look to another more competent firm.

I'd like to give zero stars to Nick Potter for his "work not done properly“, but the minimum is 1 star.
I wouldn’t recommend Nick Potter at all, stay far from him in all the way Nick and his team, the process was so stressful due to their way of communication, I have never experienced such unprofessionalism. Their email replies took weeks, and were impossible to be reached by phone, there was always an excuse why they can’t be reached. They have missed a very important thing, they forgot to register our commercial lease of 16 years back in 2019 even though we paid for his services 4300£ plus the land register fee. We realised that after one month we started the process of selling our place in November 2023, basically we could not give the title number to the buyer’s lawyer to prove that the lease was registered and sellable, that causes us big stress, big pressure and massive financial loss because of the delay we lost 2 buyers, so we lost £100k. We were waiting until now to find an amicable way to get this sorted but they are not open (want to say they actually ignored us altogether). Stay away from this lawyer and his team if you wanna save money and spare your mental health.

We bought our flat in London using the services of B&S and were placed in the care of Charlotte Archer. Despite there being many issues with the flat sale due to the nature of the purchase, Charlotte was persistent, consistent in her speedy responses, and thorough. She took care of our interests from the beginning and kept me informed on developments. Can't thank you enough for your support throughout the process. Would certainly recommend.

Avoid hiring Louise Barretto.

The service I received from Louise Barretto was full of errors, resulted in completely wrong advice and also lots of time wasted. On querying this, I was met with an arrogant and rude response.

I can't imagine another context where I would have to pay for something of such poor quality and potentially detrimental to my position.

This is particularly unhelpful in dealing with sensitive and personal family and children related issues, of which Louise Barretto is the Head of Department.

There are lots of brilliant family lawyers in London. In my experience, Louise Barretto is not one of them.