What do Lawyers in Leigh on sea do at Christmas?

December 3, 2018 by Melinda @ Giles Wilson Solicitors

For those of you who have passed our office in Leigh Broadway you may well have thought that all we have had to do this week is put up our infamous GW turquoise Christmas Reindeer in the window, but that was just a bit of fun to keep us, and all of you going in the last 2 weeks of hard work before we break up.

Despite our fun looking exterior we have been digging deep this Christmas season to meet deadlines for exchange and completion on property sales and purchases so that clients can move out of one home into another in time for Christmas – there is nothing like the pressure of a client begging you to achieve this because if not, they may have to move in with their in-laws for the Christmas season! The high intensity of removal vans that you may have noticed on the roads is because the Christmas break is one of the most popular times to move house.

Then there are the family lawyers – rushing around to ensure that our clients have the right arrangements in place for their children this holiday.  Again, quite a responsibility when you think ahead to Christmas morning and whether your client’s dream of waking up with their children with them will have come true.

Our Wills & Probate team is very busy at this time of year particularly as our older community becomes nervous of the cold weather and decide that they wish their end of life care arrangements and their wills in place before we take our break.  We ensure that all our instructions for Wills are tidied up and completed so that families can relax knowing that they are organised and can “die tidy”. 

So what do we all do when we actually get to relax? And do we ever?  We try and socialise with our friends and families, but dread that opening line at a party “So what do you do for a living?”…..  “Leasehold Enfranchisement”, “I draft Settlement Agreements” are conversation killers.  And yet we are bound by our client confidentiality and so we cannot actually speak about any of our actual cases or clients.  There was a time when a friend berated me at a party for not telling her that a mutual friend had moved house – far be it for me to give a lecture on our duties of confidentiality when the reality was that perhaps our friend did not want her to know where she had moved to.

And so, our responses to “So what do you do” are these:

“Our job is to help people move into their dream home for Christmas”

“Fixing arrangements so that separated families spend time together at Christmas”

“We help the elderly and the vulnerable put their affairs in order so they can relax over the holiday period”.

Not only are these responses true but they are conversation starters rather than conversation killers, and then once the conversation flows, we can relax and enjoy ourselves like normal people again! 

Giles Wilson would like to take the opportunity to wish all their clients, friends and colleagues a very happy Christmas time.

This editorial is by Melinda Giles at Giles Wilson Solicitors.