Asking an AI chatbot to recommend a conveyancing solicitor may feel like a quick shortcut. A report published this week shows it can send you to the wrong firm. The access to justice charity Blind Justice UK tested ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude in September 2026. When asked 30 times for the best conveyancing solicitors in Doncaster, all three named, as their top pick, a firm the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) had previously fined. None of them mentioned the fine. In Maidenhead, one chatbot kept recommending a firm that the SRA had shut down nearly seven months earlier.

Buying a home is probably the biggest transaction you'll ever make, and your conveyancer handles your deposit and mortgage money. So it's worth understanding why this happens and how to check a firm properly.

A reader question in Which? this week looks at a problem many couples don't consider until it's too late. Anne from Sussex and her husband own almost everything jointly, apart from their ISAs. ISAs can only ever be held in one name, so she wanted to know whether a surviving spouse can take over the ISA allowance straight away or has to wait for a grant of probate. The answer is reassuring, but it depends on rules that many families, and even some executors, don't know about.

The average five-year fixed mortgage rate has hit 6% for the first time in three years, according to Moneyfacts figures reported by the BBC on 5 October. Almost every fixed deal priced below 5% has gone. There were 1,494 at the start of September and only nine are left. Estate agents' body Propertymark warns that even small rises in monthly payments may force some buyers to cut their budgets or pull out completely. If you're partway through buying or selling a home, the important question now is less "what rate can I get?" and more "can this deal still fall through?"

Family lawyers expect the government's ban on social media for under-16s, due in March 2027, to affect more than teenagers' phones. Speaking to Today's Family Lawyer this week, Anita Hennessey, family law partner at HCR Law, called social media access a "significant issue" between separated parents. She said that once the ban is in place, a parent trying to enforce boundaries is likely to be in a much stronger position in a child arrangements dispute. For co-parents who keep arguing over TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the law is about to change the conversation.