History of Thorntons Law LLP

About Us

Our commitment to helping people with their property needs goes back generations. From our roots providing property support for clients across Dundee and Angus, we expanded into Perthshire and Fife, and then into the Edinburgh area. Through our long history and through ever-changing property markets, we have always focused on what our clients need and delivered services built around them.

Wide reach and local focus

Mergers have increased our reach, while maintaining a strong local focus in each area. In the early 1990s we expanded into Perthshire and then built up our presence in Fife, with mergers with the successful firms Murray Donald and Steel Eldridge Stewart. This was followed by expansion into Montrose merging with Watts in 2015 and with Clarkson Hamilton in Kirkcaldy in 2016.

Thorntons have a long-established legal office in Edinburgh and in 2016 we expanded our services, launching our estate agents Edinburgh service and conveyancing operations. In 2017 we acquired Pagan Osborne, who had offices in Edinburgh, St Andrews, Cupar and Anstruther, cementing our place as the largest estate agents in Fife. This approach means each of our property office teams are very much based in and focused on their local area, understanding local changing market conditions and opportunities, and offering a personal service. Yet all are also part of the wider Thorntons service offering, giving clients access to joined-up estate agency and legal packages as needed.

Changing and innovating

We are always looking to see how we can improve services for our clients with technology advances, communication options and responding to changing market demands – and all underpinned by our unchanging emphasis on personal service.
In the 1980s, we were the first local solicitor estate agent to open the now-familiar high street property shop, going on to open bustling property shops throughout Dundee and Angus. These gave buyers and sellers their first experience of the one-stop shop’s approach by providing a full range of complementary estate agency and legal services.
The last 25 years have seen tremendous changes in market demands with new technology and online opportunities opening up innovative ways for us to deliver services to clients, including online selling options. We continue our strong involvement with the local solicitors’ property centres, while also embracing newer nationwide platforms to give sellers the widest choice.

As well as extending our online client communication, we have also invested strongly to provide late night and weekend openings so buyers and sellers can contact someone at a time that suits them.

Our property people

Our experienced team of over 60 property professionals are based across our network of offices covering Tayside, Angus, Fife, Perthshire and Edinburgh. Their property knowledge and expertise is key to our success over the years, understanding their local property markets and how best to help clients sell for the right price and buy just what they need, whether it is a one-bedroom first flat, a new build, investment property, building plot or large family home.
The property market has certainly had ups and downs over the years, yet even when the market was at its toughest, we continued to invest in our people and systems to maintain our position and deliver the best service for sellers and buyers.

To find out how we can help you with your property needs, call us on 03330 430090, contact us online or pop into your local Thorntons property office.

“Halima Todd just left a new 5-star review of thorntons-law.co.uk: My wife and I used Thorntons solicitors for the purchase of our current home, and we could not have been more pleased with their professionalism, attentiveness, and care during the process. The two people at Thorntons we worked most closely with were Lucy and Joanne. Both of them guided us deftly through the process, offering advice when it was prudent to do so but avoiding overwhelming us with information that was overly technical or esoteric (read: we had to wade through minimal “legalese”). Emails were answered promptly and thoroughly, phone calls never felt hurried or rushed, and we consistently felt that we were being guided through the complicated home-buying process by competent, reliable, trustworthy people. While buying a home can be an emotionally taxing process for a variety of reasons, Lucy and Joanne took as much of the guesswork out of the process as was humanly possible, and left us feeling like we had made a solid, well-informed purchase. I would wholeheartedly recommend Thorntons to anyone looking to buy a home in Scotland, without reservation.”

H Todd