How does TIER® work?
Order Request
Complete the Order Request (below). It will be emailed to a TC Certified attorney licensed in the jurisdiction of the property. Speak to the TC Certified attorney within two business days.
1st Attorney Call
Business Day 2
Discuss your concerns for seeking legal counsel. If you want to engage the services of the TC Certified attorney, a signed Fee Agreement and advance fee are required. Work begins when these are received.
You are under no obligation to engage the services of the TC Certified attorney.
Document Review and Drafting
Business Days 3-6 (to start when all required documents have been received).
The TIER® analysis will be delivered within four business days of receipt of all relevant documents.
2nd Attorney Call
Business Day 8
The 2nd Attorney Call is scheduled within two business days of TIER® delivery. Your TC Certified attorney will call at the specified time. Discuss the results of your attorney’s legal analysis.
What is TIER®?
TIER delivers a written legal opinion of documents relating to a property found at the County Recorder’s Office. These documents are important because they represent risks to the use and value of a parcel that are not insured by title insurance.
Title Insurance Exceptions Review®
What makes TIER® so important is you often don’t see a TIER risk when visiting a property. This is because problems regarding exceptions to title insurance are mostly invisible. TIER® risks are often not discovered for months or years after purchase.
Note. The law assumes you are aware of, and understand the legal effects of, all documents in the public record regarding your property. Depending on where the property’s located, there’s little legal recourse for not doing your homework.
Order Request. The first step is to complete the Order Request below. It will be emailed to a TC Certified attorney licensed in the jurisdiction of the property. You will receive a confirmation email with your Order Request, the TC Certified Attorney assigned to you, and Further Instructions.
Note. TIER is covered by the attorney-client privilege and is subject to a conflict check.
1st Attorney Phone Call. The first attorney phone call will be held within two business days of Order Request. Discuss your concerns with the attorney. If you want to engage the services of the TC Certified attorney, a signed Fee Agreement and advance fee are required. Advance fee and hourly rates are subject to local conditions and are set by the TC Certified attorney.
Note. You are under no obligation to engage the services of the TC Certified attorney.
Document Review and Draft. If engaged to deliver a TIER®, all County Recorder documents will be procured. Once procured, your TIER® analysis will be delivered within four business days. Please read this document thoroughly in preparation for your second phone call.
Note. It often takes up to ten business days to procure all title exceptions documents.
2nd Attorney Phone Call. A second attorney phone call is scheduled within two business days of TIER® delivery. Your TC Certified attorney will call at the scheduled time. Discuss the result(s) of your attorney’s legal analysis of the documents reviewed.
Examples of Documents Reviewed
- Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs)
- Deeds
- Easements
- Judgments
- Plats
- Record of Surveys
- Road Agreements
- Septic Agreements
- Tax Liens
- Water Agreements
What You Should Know
TC Certified Attorney. Your TC Certified attorney is licensed to practice law in the State where the subject property is located. Your TC Certified attorney has a minimum of five years’ full-time substantive real estate experience.
Fee Agreement. A Fee Agreement sets out the terms by which a client engages the legal services of an attorney. Fee Agreements can be quite detailed but usually address scope of legal service to be performed, financial terms (including advance fee and hourly rates), and confidentiality considerations involved in the attorney-client relationship.
Pricing. Advance fee and hourly rates are subject to local conditions and are set by the TC Certified attorney. The TC Certified attorney will discuss advance fee and hourly rates with you during the 1st Attorney Call.
Advance Fee. Advance fees are monies required in advance before legal services are rendered. Advance fee monies remain the property of the client until exhausted by invoiced legal services and expenses.
Trust Account. By law, advance fees for legal services are held in trust. Attorneys are barred from using client trust fund monies for anything except invoiced legal fees and expenses. Trust accounts are held to strict accounting standards.
TIER® Order Request
Order Information
Have the following ready.
- Contact information.
- County and State of subject property.
- Goals. Concise statement of why you are seeking legal counsel
- Documents. Upload exceptions documents listed in your property’s preliminary title report if the report is less than 90-days-old. If older than 90-days, your TC Certified attorney will obtain them.
Confirmation Email. You will receive a confirmation email within minutes.
Check Junk Mail. Monitor your email closely for your confirmation email, including junk mail.
Please note that we also offer these legal services: real estate contract drafting and real estate contract review.
At Timely Contract, we have local real estate attorneys who have experience throughout Idaho, including: Boise, Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene, Lewiston, Moscow, and Sandpoint.
We also have local real estate attorneys who have experience throughout Montana, including: Missoula, Billings, Bozeman, and Kalispell.
Limited-scope legal services restrict the involvement of an attorney in a client matter to a predefined set of legal services. Timely Contract’s suite of limited-scope legal services address common transactional problems encountered in the real estate industry.
Limited-scope legal services do not meet the needs of every legal client. If a potential client’s legal need is beyond the scope of the Timely Contract solutions, your TC Certified attorney will recommend traditional legal services.