Cohabilitation for initial application

Dear all, I hope someone here could help us with the below query.

I am a British citizen working in France temporarily on an expat contract. I have met my wife (Non EU) in the UK in Jan 2020 before I move to take on this contract, and we got married in a registry office in London. My wife was on a student visa then, and switched to tier 2 visa in July 2021.

We would like to switch from her tier 2 to spouse visa as I am now planning to move back to the UK to live together and it will be easier for us to find jobs and settle in a suitable location that way.

The only issue is that I have been in France since 2020 and due to covid we did not live together. We still stayed in touch on daily basis and we have call logs and messages to show that as well as lots of photos. we also have a join account, money transfer, wedding photos, etc. but we dont have a place together yet (my wife is a guest with her family when I am not in the UK and We rent services apartments for my visits). We have however just rented a place two months ago and she moved there. I have also made trips to London as much as I could, depending on covid travel restrictions and work commitments.

I have been told to apply for spouse visa we need to have lived together for 2 years and to show a proof of that, but I engaged a solicitor who assured us for the initial spouse application we do not need to demonstrate cohabitation. They are a reputable firm and recommended by many friends. They also said they will not take any fees until the application is accepted and this is how confident they are in the case.

We are still concerned as if there is any risk of refusal we might better wait until I am back in the UK then apply, however it will make life a lot easier if we can get the spouse visa, considering we will need to get it sooner or later.

Just to mentions we have enough savings for over 6 months for the required financial requirement.

could you please help us with this, we would really appreciate it.

Please help

Quick query please. Do we need to show evidence of cohabilitation for our first spouse visa application? Considering we are applying from within the UK to swtich from tier 2 to spouse visa.

I'm in a similar boat- we got married in September but haven't got much proof of cohabitation just yet and due to apply for spouse visa in April also in UK already.
Hopefully you will get some answers on here!