Legal matters

So in 2 weeks time, we are supposed to 'complete' the purchase from the developer. This means that we are supposed to pay the balance 10% and the share of property tax/maintenance fees.

Just wanted to share that our experience with our legal firm is far from satisfactory. We engaged Circular Law (as a recommendation from our mortgage broker), and I think while generally the transaction moved through quite ok, there were some areas which I felt it didn't exactly meet my expectations.
(although i got to admit that it could be i expect a law firm to be error-free 99.9% of the time).

Example would be:
(1) During the initial meet up for property title searches (for any encumbrances etc), the letters we are given to sign have had errors in it (wrong IC numbers), which was unexpected, and luckily we spotted them

(2) We provided the stamp duties payment to the lawyers who couriered it to IRAS as our legal advisor. When we noticed that the cheque was not cleared by IRAS after 1 week, we went back to Circular law 2 to 3 times informing them of such. However, the response from Circular Law was always the same - they couriered the cheque. We asked for evidence of receipt, but Circular Law was not able to provide any (although i think it's an IRAS matter). Eventually, we have to instruct the lawyers to call IRAS to check (no initiative on their part!) and it was discovered that IRAS did not receive our cheque. Shortly after, we received a letter of penalty from IRAS asking us to pay the stamp duties plus associated late payment penalties.
Luckily, the appeal against the penalty was successful - although it did create some trouble on our part. If Circular Law took us seriously that our cheque was not cleared, it could have saved some trouble.

(3) Finally, as we are nearing completion, Circular law sent us a letter informing us to send them a cashiers order by 31st September (when our completion is end August). Firstly, there is no 31st Sept, and while we are happy to pay 1 month later from our completion date, we know it could not be accurate. If we simply relied on the advise of our lawyers, I think we would have definitely ran into complications at completion date!

These are to me, pretty amateur schoolboyish kind of mistakes, which i certainly do not expect from a lawyer. But oh wells, at least the transaction is coming to a close.