Holdens Law Reviews 12

A professional and efficient service provided by Fiona Ward in helping us prepare our wills. Fiona has recently joined from another local firm and she is evidently a real asset to the firm.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to David and Miss Facet at Holdens Law in Lancaster. Throughout my matter, they were professional, knowledgeable, and extremely supportive. Their clear communication, attention to detail, and reassuring manner made a difficult situation much easier to manage. I am very grateful for their expertise and would not hesitate to recommend Holdens Law to anyone seeking reliable and professional legal advice.

Very rude. Wrote to them twice but no reply.

Hannah Brook is inexperienced and unhelpful. She doesn't listen or care: she likes to write lengthy letters and talking and explaining for long but she is not listening.
She is lacking certain knowledges too and instead of trying to look into it, she is telling you off if you do.
I don't feel supported and that she understands my situation like my kids are my priority. Rather adding more stress to the anyway hard situation.

Excellent Client Support.

Jennifer Larton who specialises in Will’s & LPA sorted both for me at a very competitive rate…

10/10 HIGHLY RECOMMEND

I bought a property and used Holdens Solicitors. I was constantly having to chase things up! I never received any updates unless I rang to see if there was any news and it was always the same answer - no. The solicitor would 'then' email the sellers solicitor. Weeks would pass and the solicitor hadn't chased anything up or checked to see if they had received the paperwork they were waiting for or even if they had received replies to their emails. Then suddenly we were exchanging contracts and completing within a few days! Then I received a phone call to say I could collect the keys from the estate agents, luckily I rang them first to check, I was told they were still waiting for confirmation from the sellers solicitors so had to wait about 4 hours before collecting them! I am still not able to move in to the property due to the exchange of contracts taking so long; the carpets, furniture, etc had to be ordered and as we only exchanged 3 days before completion this has caused me so many problems! If the solicitor had chased things up we could have exchanged contracts much earlier, even if the completion wouldn't have been for ages at least I would have been able to order the carpets, furniture etc and had it arrive sooner! I was so looking forward to moving in to my new home but it has all been ruined! I have been caused so much stress, to the point of being ill! I would not recommend Holdens Solicitors again!

If I were able to give then zero stars I would, they have been appalling. They are executors of my aunts will, since I informed them she had died on the 2nd of January this year, they have only answered the phone to me once and none of us have had any contact from them. This is despite numerous emails and voice mails being left by myself, my cousin, my estate agent (left six voicemails, no response) and the buyers’ solicitors. 6 weeks ago, my sister rang (from a nonlocal number) and was able to speak with the ‘solicitor’ who was apparently dealing with the case. My sister referred her to Holdens website which said we should have received a full break down of costs, been kept informed and been told what ‘type of probate' our aunts is (a simple one according to the website) Rebecca apologised and assured my sister she would send out the aforementioned break down of costs by email that night. My sister received nothing and no one has answered my sisters phone calls since.
I am a qualified Barrister and have been executor unofficially for several friends (pre and post 'covid') as well as for my mums, so I am aware as to how long it takes and what is involved. Last week the buyer’s solicitors finally after numerous attempts to contact Holdens, got a short email to say, 'they are waiting for probate and some information from the lender as the property has Equity Release registered against it’. This is the first we have heard about ‘Equity Release’, no one from Holdens has attempted to contact us to inform us and they are still not answering our calls or responding to any of our voice or emails. We are all very distressed and disgusted with Holdens and would not recommend them as executors to anyone else.

DONT USE THEM you will regret it!!!! Terrible service not pleasant at all and a waste of my time. Mr Holden had a stinking attitude and clearly didn’t want to deal with my case unless I handed him more money. He’s unapproachable, rude, arrogant, obnoxious. He was disorganised with his paper work and he kept rolling his eye, not letting me speak and constantly taking over me. The worst service I’ve ever experienced, so glad I didn’t do business with him. AVOID like the plague people!!!!!

I just wanted to write a positive review of my experience so far with Holden's law. Jemma Higson who is dealing with our sale and purchase has been fantastic, great at communicating and has dealt with things very fast compared to our buyers and vendors solicitors being quite slow! Unfortunately our house sale fell through, Jemma showed empathy and support. We are now back on track to sell and I have no doubt Jemma will be fantastic, and from previous experience in buying with a different company who were very abrupt and not very good at communicating. I highly recommend and hope Jemma receives some recognition for her fantastic work so far.

John Batty will do anything to try and win a case at the expense the welfare of vulnerable people, he will not let anybody get in his way or the law. He has no scruples so if you are a guilty criminal that wants to get away with a crime he is definitely the solicitor for you, but if you are a decent law abiding citizen who likes the truth steer clear.

If you have no timescales you want work to be done within then this is the law firm to work with.

Peter Rutherford appeared to be very nice -unfailingly polite - however absolutely terrible at replying to emails or voicemails. Ten days after he had been sent documentation I had to call and email him to chase up! After emailing him all the requested documents, again nothing from Peter - so once again I had to email and then leave a voicemail message asking him to get in touch with me to give me timescales and let me know if there was anything else he needed.

So unbelievably super slow.

Finally got fed up and moved to another solicitor - Peter was asked to send my client file to the new lawyer, given the need for urgency and him apparently not having the bandwidth to process a simple transfer of equity. Despite the need for urgency once again having been conveyed to him he apparently sent the client file by post rather than email - says he sent it on Monday first class. By Thursday it had still not arrived.

I would not recommend anyone use this firm.

Why can't all solicitors be like this firm?. All staff were very helpful and courteous, kept us updated on each stage of the process and handled the whole process professionally and made it stress free.