Child & Child Reviews 

Philip Cohen is thoroughly dishonest and useless.

He did not read the papers, advised me badly and over charged over half a million pounds by inflating his bills. Avoid at all costs. Hes done this to different people.

I instructed Chloe Redman for a property purchase in London at the beginning of March '23. This was following a recommendation from a family friend who has worked with Child & Child before, with positive reviews. To justify the experience rating given, it's worth breaking my review down into parts:

1. Service

I was mostly satisfied with Chloe's attention to detail & advice offered when called upon; the flat purchase process is very complicated & I could never have done it without her help & guidance, especially as a first-time buyer. I was kept updated regularly during the process & I was mostly satisfied with response times, albeit slow at times - but I appreciate it's a busy line of work & delays are likely as a result.

I sadly don't think enough proactivity was shown throughout the process & this inevitably slowed the purchase timeline down by weeks at minimum, and realistically up to two months. A good example is at the end of the process; I was asked to submit three separate wet signature & witness-signed documents in a short period, which required me to visit the office in London three times in one week to cover the urgent timeline caused by their administrative delays. All three documents could have been sorted way in advance at the same point, but they were drip-fed to me one by one with no attempt to proactively sort in one go.

Another example regards chasing the seller's solicitor to collate information for the management pack. This process was apparently delayed by two months according to C&C; I am confident this could've been chased more regularly & with more urgency to resolve sooner, but this never materialised. It ended up causing a hefty delay that ran three weeks before my existing rental contract expiring & has caused untold administrative stress since completion on 1st August - none of this should've ever happened. Instead, the delay was blamed on the building's freeholders & the seller's solicitor with no solutions offered along the way. The estate agent I worked with regularly called me in a baffled manner at what the delay was, and I couldn't even provide a reason - as C&C didn't ever give me a reliable one. It ended up getting rather nasty towards the end as I kept being told delays were happening without any meaningful explanation.

2. Process

The documentation & logistical processes involved in this purchase were nothing short of farcical.

- DocuSign wasn't supported for some unknown reason, meaning every document I was sent had to be hand-signed, scanned and often returned as hard-copy, which is so slow & pointless in the modern day.
- I had some issues with my payment source not being accepted due to logistical reasons re: gifting. Rather than making it easy to find a solution & offering advice, my fees were put up due to increased time costs in having to sort it, and I was left to sweat to find a solution on my own. When I did find one, I was made to work extremely hard to source a massive collection of documents to "get it through compliance" - which was never explained to me & I got very little clarification on throughout. This slowed the purchase down massively & I was not really helped at all - in fact, I was made to feel like an aggressor.
- I was never given a timeline of things I would need to source during the process, hence I couldn't get my information together ahead of time. It was always sent without notice & I was pressured to return waves of documents with little explanation as to why they'd be needed. I suspect this way of communicating delayed my purchase by at least a month.

Conclusion:
I wouldn't recommend C&C to a friend, as I believe they actively slowed down my flat purchase & I could've got in the property way earlier using another firm. They do however communicate with you over phone & email and don't come across as malicious or bad people by any means. I think Chloe was doing the best she could with what she had, but what she had wasn't good enough.

Rhea Rughani from Child and Child was extremely efficient; her explanations were clear, she was quick to find solutions to problems. A real ‘can do’ attitude; and I would recommend her with my eyes closed

This solicitor is unprofessional, unreliable, and lacks integrity.
They were handling a property purchase for me, and not only did they fail to make the exchange, but they also refused to return my deposit (GBP 32,000).
Overall, I would not recommend this solicitor to anyone seeking legal assistance with property purchases. Their lack of professionalism and unethical behavior is unacceptable and could cause serious financial harm to their clients.

Had a great experience recently with Child & Child. I purchased a house in SE London, with Alexa Kordowicz acting for me.

The transaction wasn't the smoothest since we were dealing with a trainee estate agent and an overseas seller who was very slow. However, Alexa was proactive and authoritative in chasing the relevant people during the transaction and successfully negotiated a price reduction, she was responsive when I asked for updates and very good at simplifying everything for me with regards to the legal jargon. Overall I was repeatedly assured that she and the firm cared about me and were on top of my transaction.

Would definitely recommend her and the firm in the future.

Wow what can I say every laywer in this firm is incompetent!!!!

This is a terrible law firm. They do not know what they are doing, they are unprofessional and there is no management of the case. Essentially, there is no service. They have failed to meet court deadlines with my matter and submitted court orders without my approval. Please save yourself the stress and go elsewhere.