Today at work in my day job as a legal secretary I attended to a property sale appointment with a lone lady client. It promised to be a short and sweet lunchtime meeting as I was intimately familiar with conveyancing (property trading) cases.
However I detected one or two problems not directly related to my legal work, that I wanted to get to the bottom of regardless, for ethical reasons.
Someone was pressuring my client to allow the purchasers of her property to inspect the premises shortly before the sale, and that person is attempting to force her to agree without giving a good explanation as to the urgency or seriousness of it all.
She took it in good humor and was polite about it, but asked me if the inspection was compulsory.
I got suspicious immediately and after a cursory inspection of the Option to Purchase, I confirmed that indeed the purchasers were not privy to such and are possibly acting in bad faith.
Such forced inspections taking place right when the sellers are at their messiest (literally, due to impending house moving) usually carry a malicious ulterior motive in my experience, and I was not hesitant to share my experiences with my client.
After all, if the purchasers had a need to conduct re-inspection or pre-renovation measurements in the subject premises, they could have easily added special clauses to aforementioned sale and purchase agreement or had informed the lawyers to obtain the necessary consent from both parties way in advance.
I would stress at this point that legal cases require lots of planning and lead time. Last minute requests introduce unnecessary risks to all and may very well cause unwanted delays to case completion.
What then can the purchasers and housing agents gain from forcing my client to grant them a last minute inspection?
Their true motives are very simple: gain access to the property when it is possibly in a state of house removal, and when my client is either caught up with work or busy with her weekend schedule. This allows unscrupulous buyers and agents the opportunity to fabricate untruthful observations about the property being in bad condition then proceed to make claims for damages close to the end of the case!
My point for bringing up the issue is this: No highly educated, well to do property buyer or agent would knowingly throw a monkey wrench into everybody's hard work at the last minute. It is totally idiotic.
So why? Obviously they think there is something to gain from it. But here's a lesson for chauvinists who think a lone lady client is an easy target: Being the bully does not make one stronger in any way. It only serves to highlight the fact that empowered women in today's society are extremely powerful.
Just because someone is friendly, polite and compliant does not mean that anyone has the right to abuse her!
So I was quite amused over lunchtime for people were calling my boss seeking explanations as to why this nice, friendly lady suddenly gave everyone hell from trying to take advantage of her!
In the end, my boss did ratify my decision to empower my client with the knowledge to make the right decision, which is to deny the purchasers any further opportunity to mess up their own purchase!
Empowerment of women is for everyone's good, and we can learn a thing or two from stalwart ladies who are calm under fire, never judgmental and eager to seek knowledge to better herself.
My client might have wondered why I went out of my way to grant her the opportunity to seek social justice, but there was no mystery about it in the end - I told her the story of my hairstyle, and my ongoing battle to uphold women's rights.
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