Dual representation: speed, costs and conflict

Bridging runs on speed. One firm acting for both lender and borrower cuts out the back and forth that slows everything down. No second set of lawyers to chase, no waiting for two firms to agree a date. Information moves once. On a deal that needs to complete in days, that can save it.

It's cheaper too. There’s one file, so one bill instead of two. On short-term lending, where fees eat into the numbers fast, that adds up. And, because the borrower is usually the one footing the legal costs on both sides, whether directly or through the loan structure, cutting a second set of fees is not a marginal saving. On a small bridge, it can be the difference between a deal that stacks up and one that doesn't.

It also means fewer nasty surprises. One solicitor sees the whole picture instead of half of it through someone else's correspondence. Problems are caught and sorted out in a single conversation, not through a week of emails between four parties. A title issue, a missing consent or a gap in the security package are spotted once and fixed once, rather than discovered by one firm and relayed second-hand to another that then has to form its own view before anyone can move.

There is a less obvious benefit too, which is consistency of standard. A solicitor who has acted on hundreds of bridging completions for a lender's panel knows exactly what that lender needs to see before it will release funds. That institutional memory means fewer queries are raised for their own sake and fewer conditions added because a borrower's solicitor, acting for the first and only time on this kind of facility, wants to be seen to have covered every base. Familiarity cuts friction on both sides of the file.

Read the full story in B&C Magazine, here.