Need to know

• Professional negligence in conveyancing goes beyond admin errors and can relate to advice and judgment calls.

• Disappointment alone is not negligence. A client losing money or feeling misled does not automatically mean the professional acted below the required standard.

Welcome to TSL’s Weekly Edge, whether you’re aiming for a regional or high-street practice, or just want to get a feel for how law works in the real world beyond textbooks, you’re in the right place. 

No corporate jargon, no massive deals, just real useful information designed to give you that extra edge in your legal journey.

🧠Wilson’s Weekly Wisdom

I came across a post on LinkedIn last year that still sticks with me: “Every door is open if you PUSH: Persevere Until Something Happens.”

It’s a reminder that opportunities in law aren’t always handed out, you have to create them yourself. Whether that’s reaching out to a firm for work experience, or setting up a LinkedIn post that shows your insight, confidence is often the key that gets you through the door.

You don’t need perfect timing or permission. Be polite, be proactive, and don’t be afraid to ask. The worst response you’ll get is silence and even that teaches you something.

💡Spotlight Article

You’re always told that professionals have duties, that if they mess up, there are consequences, and that negligence is what happens when those two collide.

But real life’s knottier than that. Sometimes a professional can get it wrong, obviously wrong, and are still not actually negligent. 

That’s just how it plays out.

🔎What’s happening? 

That uncomfortable truth sits at the heart of professional negligence law. It’s the grey area where expertise meets judgment, where courts refuse to play the hindsight game, and where a bad outcome doesn’t automatically mean someone is to blame. You could see that tension clearly in a recent Court of Appeal case on property valuation.

Bratt v Jones [2025] EWCA Civ 562 came out of a dispute anyone in practice will recognise. Mr Bratt owned development land with planning permission and asked a professional valuer to put a market figure on it. The price came back at just over £4 million. Mr Bratt thought that was too low and said that, if the land had been valued properly, he would have secured a better financial outcome. On that basis, he sued for professional negligence.

On the face of it, it sounds straightforward. The valuer owed a duty of care. The client relied on the valuation. The client says he suffered loss.

So, what went wrong?

The Court of Appeal zeroed in on one key point. Valuation is not an exact science. It involves judgment calls about the market, comparable sales, assumptions, and risk. Two competent valuers can look at the same property and reach different figures without either being wrong.

That is where the idea of a margin of error does the heavy lifting.

Courts accept valuation involves judgment, so they allow a reasonable range where professionals may legitimately disagree. Only when a valuation falls outside that range does negligence even arise.

In this case, expert evidence showed the valuation was comfortably within that margin. Other approaches may have been reasonable, but that alone was not enough. The court wasn’t concerned with the “best” valuation, only whether it was one a competent valuer could reasonably have given.

And that, in the end, was that!

❓ Why it matters to high street firms

Professional negligence rarely arrives with a label.

It shows up in the day job: a conveyancing file, a development purchase, a recommendation to instruct a valuer. Somewhere along the line, a figure doesn’t sit right, and the question becomes whether someone got it wrong badly enough to be liable.

So Bratt v Jones matters, because:

• High street firms sit closest to reliance: They introduce valuers, coordinate reports, and turn technical advice into decisions. When things later unravel, those early steps matter. Understanding how courts treat judgment helps firms see where responsibility may, and may not, fall.

• It helps manage clients who feel short-changed: Clients do not talk about margins of error. They talk about why their asset feels undervalued. This case gives lawyers a way to explain that disappointment is not negligence, and reasonable judgment is protected even when outcomes are argued.

• It supports sensible risk management: The message is reassuring. Careful reasoning, defensible assumptions, and proper records matter more than chasing a “perfect” figure. The law wants competence, not perfection.

In all, the case shows where the line is so firms can handle unhappy clients without every mistake becoming a claim!

Margin Of Error

Sounds like econ nitpicking, but in professional negligence, it’s more than numbers.
A margin of error gives professionals room for judgment. Competent experts can differ without being at fault.

In Bratt v Jones, the valuation was within that range. Not perfect, just not unreasonably wrong.
The law should punish incompetence, not honest judgment!