Guide
Why a lawyer closes your sale here
Most of my buyers move here from somewhere else, and a good number arrive from states where a title company runs the closing and no attorney ever appears. South Carolina does not work that way. It is much better to learn that now than at the table.
My buyers arrive from all over — Georgiasends me more than anywhere else — and the question I field every few months is some version of “do I really need a lawyer for this, or is that just how your agent likes to do it?”
It is not how I like to do it. It is how South Carolina works, and the reason is worth understanding because it changes who is accountable for your transaction.
I’m a REALTOR®, not an attorney. What follows is what the South Carolina Supreme Court has said, linked so you can read it yourself.
The court regulates this, not the legislature
The South Carolina Constitution gives the Supreme Court the duty of regulating the practice of law in the state. So the answer to “which statute requires an attorney?” is that this is not really a statutory question — it is a question about what counts as practising law, and the Court decides that.
The Court has deliberately refused to write a single comprehensive rule, holding that it is “neither practicable nor wise” to attempt one and that what constitutes the practice of law turns on the facts of each specific case. It has also been clear that the practice of law is not confined to litigation but “extends to activities in other fields which entail specialized legal knowledge and ability” — language from State v. Buyers Service Co. in 1987.
The four steps
Buyers Service divided the purchase of residential real estate into four steps. Sixteen years later, in Doe v. McMaster, the Court confirmed the same four exist in a refinance and that the distinction between the two situations was “without significance”.
- 01
The title examination
Establishing the current status of the title and any encumbrances on it. In Doe v. McMaster the court described this, in the refinance context, as determining the current status of the title and any new encumbrances.
- 02
Preparing the loan documents
The instruments have to be drafted so that you get the funds and the lender gets a mortgage that protects its interest. The court treated crafting those documents as part of the same legal work.
- 03
The closing itself
The meeting where it is executed. Buyers Service put the closing in its own step, separate from the paperwork either side of it.
- 04
Recording title and mortgage
Settling anything being paid off and perfecting the recordation of the new mortgage. A sale that is not properly recorded is a problem you discover much later.
What the 2003 case actually decided
It is worth being precise about Doe v. McMaster, because it gets described online in a way the opinion does not support.
It was a refinance case, and its holding was permissive. An attorney had arranged to work alongside a title insurance company on a lender’s refinances, and the Court concluded that the arrangement was “not violative of the proscription against the unauthorized practice of law, as long as the association is conducted as herein prescribed”. A footnote limits the opinion to the stipulated facts in front of it.
So it is not authority for a longer list of steps, and you will see plenty of write-ups that say otherwise. What it does settle is that refinancing gets the same treatment as a purchase, because it affects the same legal rights.
What this means if you are buying from out of state
Three practical things follow, none of which anyone tends to mention until the week of closing.
You choose the attorney.The choice you have is which one, not whether. That choice tends to get made by default — whoever the other side proposes, or whoever the lender has used before. It is worth making deliberately.
Your agent cannot prepare the documents for you. Preparing instruments that affect title is legal work. If an agent anywhere offers to handle that part to save you a fee, that is not a favour.
Being out of state is normal here and manageable. Most of my buyers are not in South Carolina for most of the process. That is routine, but it is a conversation to have with the closing attorney early rather than a fortnight out, because how you sign when you are elsewhere is their call to make and their arrangements to set up.
What is deliberately not on this page
No attorney fee figure, and no named recommendation. Fees vary and a number here would be stale; and a referral is a conversation about your transaction, not a list. No timeline in days either — that depends on your lender, your financing and the property, and a schedule invented for a web page is the kind of thing people plan a move around.
Common questions
- Do I need an attorney to buy a house in South Carolina?
- In practice, yes. The South Carolina Supreme Court regulates the practice of law in the state, and it has held that the practice of law is not confined to litigation but extends to activities entailing specialised legal knowledge and ability. In State v. Buyers Service Co. (1987) it divided the purchase of residential real estate into four steps — the title search, the preparation of loan documents, the closing, and the recording of title and mortgage — and treated them as requiring attorney involvement. The court has deliberately declined to write a single comprehensive rule, holding instead that what counts as the practice of law turns on the facts of each case. The practical result is that residential transactions in South Carolina are closed under attorney supervision, which is not how a good many other states work.
- Which parts of a South Carolina closing does the attorney cover?
- The four steps the Supreme Court identified in Buyers Service, and which it confirmed in Doe v. McMaster (2003) apply to a refinance as much as to a purchase: a title examination to establish the current status of the title and any new encumbrances; the preparation of the loan documents and instruments; the closing itself; and the settlement and recording of the mortgage. McMaster is worth reading precisely because it is permissive — the court approved the arrangement in front of it, subject to being conducted as prescribed, and limited its opinion to the stipulated facts. It is not authority for a longer list of steps, whatever the secondary write-ups say.
- How is this different from buying in a title-company state?
- In many states a title or escrow company runs the closing end to end and a lawyer never appears. Buyers arriving from those states often assume the attorney here is an optional extra they can decline to save a fee, or that their agent can prepare the paperwork. Neither is the case in South Carolina. The choice you actually have is which attorney, not whether — and that is a choice worth making deliberately rather than defaulting to whoever the other side proposes.
Sources
Every rule below is set by someone other than me, and each one changes on its own schedule. The date is when I last opened the link and checked that this page still matches it. Before you act on any of it, open the source — and for anything specific to one address or one parcel, confirm it for that address.
- Doe v. McMaster, Op. No. 25508 (S.C. 2003) — official opinion, which restates the four-step division of a residential real estate purchase from State v. Buyers Service Co. and holds it applies equally to a refinance — checked 2026-08-24
- State v. Buyers Service Co., Inc., 292 S.C. 426, 357 S.E.2d 15 (1987) — the practice of law is not confined to litigation but extends to activities entailing specialised legal knowledge; quoted and applied in the opinion above — checked 2026-08-24
Buying from out of state?
Tell me where you're coming from and I'll walk you through what's different about doing this in South Carolina.