Birchall Blackburn Law Reviews 

My experience with Birchall Blackburn Law was very exhausting. From the start, I never felt welcomed as a client or valued; it often felt like we were being served as a favor rather than a paying customer. The team’s attitude was frequently rude, and there was a significant communication gap. It was nearly impossible to reach our solicitor, and updates were scarce. Note that it was chain free transaction, freehold property, but it took almost 3 months to complete after taking priority service.
The work was slow, which forced us to pay for priority service to actually get responses and progress. Even then, while things improved slightly, the delays caused frustration with our buyer, and we only managed to complete the deal by chasing the solicitor and involving the estate agent.
I would only recommend Birchall Blackburn Law if you have plenty of time, can pay for priority service (£480 extra approximately), or don’t mind receiving very few updates. Overall, the service was poor and stressful.

Note the priority service costed as an extra £480 which was completely wrong to take. We had to give in to their demand so that the file could move forward, otherwise the deal would have fallen through.

Update: The client service team looked into my dispute, they took the full 8 weeks and responded on the last day of the 8 week timeline which was hugely expected. The completely rejected my complaint and are not willing to refund my priority service charge. I have continued to dispute the £480 fee that they charged wrongly. If they continue to be dismissive of my compliant, I will be proceeding this dispute to the Legal Ombudsman.

Great professional service and a positive outcome. Would highly recommend. Thank you.

The conveyancing team lacked the communication and reliability we expected. Updates were infrequent, emails went unanswered, and we were left in the dark for most of the process. My step brother had to repeatedly follow up to get essential information. Not a smooth experience.

We have been delighted with the service and the running smooth of the house sale.
Our trainee solicitor Dilpreet Mathaude was very professional, helpful and was more than happy to help and answered emails very promptly.

We are so so pleased to have been put in touch with Ben and the team at Birchall. The process was long but this was unforeseen and even Ben said it usually happens much faster. The app for completing tasks made us feel like we were really part of the team and it was fun ticking off the to do list.
Our only constructive criticism would be about their email replies. I would have preferred them to have felt more personal rather than one sentence. Of course it was stating the facts of what we needed to know. But I would have felt even more secure if they had more detail.

I’ve worked with Birchall twice now - for my own property purchase and my parents purchase then sale. I have found them to be really responsive to clients. Their portal makes transactions feel secure and managed. We were assigned to Farhana. She was experienced and knowledgeable (and patient!). She’s an exceptional communicator - my parents and I were able to get the information needed quickly and efficiently any time we had a question. We didn’t deal with others in the team often but when we did, they were great too!

I wrote a review for this firm of solicitors which I accidentally deleted when I received their reply to my first review which I was trying to edit. Their service on our conveyancing was appalling. They did not respond to messages on the phone. They did not respond to simple questions. They failed to understand clear instructions. When I wrote my first review I said that they did not deserve 1 star. Since then they failed to look after our money properly by distributing the sale funds incorrectly. But for the good relationships between us , the vendors, this would have been really serious. Please go elsewhere with your conveysncing business. I hope trust pilot will now check out the 5 star reviews of them.
We await the results of their formal complaints process with no great expectations.

Catherine and Sophie made the conveyancing process very straightforward and simple, they were great.

Reda and Suzanne guided me through the entire buying process of a property in a professional and courteous manner.
Managing a difficult transaction due to complications introduced by individuals further up the chain.
In the end we managed to get everything squared away even after a few hiccups due to a few errors I had made.
They were thorough, which matters more for me with the purchase of a property.

Excellent service for my house purchase from Karen. She was informative and very responsive whenever I got in touch. Would definitely recommend and use again!

Huge thank you to Reda and Suzanne for helping me sell a property. Both answered the phone whenever I rang and kept me up to date throughout the process. I would recommend using Birchall Blackburn.

Janette Lawrence has been utterly superb for us! Kind, patient, no question was a stupid question and always took the time to ensure we knew everything, every single step of the way! I cannot recommend Janette & Birchall Blackburn's services enough. Even when Janette was away, her colleagues (Claire) were superb as well. We've had a brilliant experience and we'll be using them / Janette again for sure!

To add insult to injury, and further to previous reviews, the money from the property sale (circa £350k) still hasn't been transferred to our accounts. Our solicitor is "checking".

We had a very disappointing experience using this firm for our house purchase.

Communication was extremely slow throughout, and at one point we were actually told to stop emailing for updates and simply wait to hear from them. The conveyancer handling our sale was extremely rude and unprofessional. We were repeatedly asked for the same information multiple times, which clearly showed poor internal communication between staff handling our file.

The transaction should have been straightforward as neither we nor the seller were in a chain, yet the process was heavily delayed. The delays were so significant that the seller nearly pulled out twice. We even had to contact the seller directly to reassure them that we were not the ones holding things up. I also had to go into firm itself to hand over documents and speak to someone in person as I lost all trust - not a shock to find that the conveyancer dealing with our sale, was not in!

The estate agents involved commented that this was the worst firm they had dealt with, which unfortunately matched our experience.

To make matters worse, the final fees were unclear and difficult to understand, but we felt pressured to pay immediately due to the risk of the seller withdrawing for a third time.

Buying a home is stressful enough without feeling unsupported by your own solicitors. We would not recommend this firm based on our experience. Find someone else and save yourself the stress!

Really good service and would definitely use again keep me updated and easy to upload documents

the conveyancing team at Birchall Blackburn handled a house sale and purchase for us. The transaction was quite complicated in places but the team handled all aspects thoroughly and efficiently with great attention to detail. Thanks to Reda Dali-Bey and Suzanne Rowan. Would recommend and use again.

Constantly adding fees onto a fixed fee service. No explanation...in English what they are for and why they are being added after contracts have been sent out and returned.

Ellen at Birchall Blackburn provided incredible support and representation during family court proceedings. Having worked with Ellen for some time I had total confidence in her knowledge of my case. She is highly responsive, reliable, professional and knowledgeable and has a calm and compassionate manner. I also feel she has always offered options and minimised unnecessary costs where possible. I’m incredibly grateful to Ellen at the team for their support and achieving the outcomes I hoped for within proceedings.

Birchall Blackburn were great in the purchase of our right to buy property. Very efficient and quick to respond to any queries. They use clever tech to verify capital and deposits etc and so there is not the usual drama of printing bank statements or downloading them to then email. All done very quickly though an app. Jade was our conveyancer and she was great. I worried about the distance as the firm is in Manchester and we are in the South East of England, I needn’t have worried as all went extremely well and completion happened yesterday. Thoroughly recommend!

Following a recommendation I chose to use Birchall and Blackburn Law to sell my late mothers home. The transaction was very straightforward, no chain involved and we had a cash buyer desperate to move in. I had previously used local solicitors but decided to save on the cost and use a remote service as the transaction was so simple. The initial response was very efficient and the online portal facility is very good. Unfortunately things very quickly changed. Communication between the solicitors seemed patchy with both blaming each other for delays and omissions. After 19 or 20 weeks I began to call my contact several times a week and each time the call went to answerphone. I followed up with an email each time but ultimately my calls were only returned once or twice and only after three or four days had passed. At 24 weeks my buyer was threatening to cancel the process. I tried to call the conveyancing team many times but was still unable to get past the answerphone.
In desperation I called the new business desk and surprise, surprise the call was answered each time.
I asked to speak to someone in authority and eventually, after several calls, I spoke to a supervisor in the conveyancing team. Long and short of it is that the sale went through - eventually and after a great deal of stress and anguish. If I were generous I would say that this company is going through a period of growth and perhaps is not adequately staffed or trained in the appropriate teams. I cannot recommend their services based on my experience and would strongly advise using a local conveyancing team where you have easy access to the people involved.