I recently read an article in an online legal magazine, under the heading; ‘200 emails a day’: conveyancers reveal ‘relentless’ deadline pressure.
Kate Atkinson, director and head of legal practice at The Partnership, said: “I was working from home for most of the time, which meant an early start of typically 7.15am to get started before the phone started ringing at 9.00am, which would continue throughout the day. I would normally not finish before 9.00pm and, even then, I still had a lot of tasks to complete for my clients which made it very difficult to leave my desk.”
Pretty much as expected considering the number of transactions that have completed in the last six months or so. However, I went on to read a few posts in the comments section of the magazine (all posted anonymously of course!):
“I was a high street solicitor and my conveyancing practice declined over the years because I did not answer estate agents chase/progress calls neither did I pay referral fees. I heard that one agent was telling my clients that I had died so the clients went to the agent’s pet solicitor and got whatever service was offered.”
“Just completely ignore Estate Agents like I do and that will cut down unnecessary phone calls and emails by at least 50% straight off the bat.”
“Get rid of referral fees – these are the cancer which is producing the current state of affairs. With referral fees gone the bucket shop conveyancers doing this will be gone as well. Several very naff estate agents and introducer firms would also go to the wall.”
“Each month you can set your watch to some Estate Agents as to when they will start sticking their oar in and generally being a complete nuisance. More harm than good.”
Quite frankly, I find comments like these disturbing. Of course, the same can be said about some of the comments posted by agents about conveyancers.
The crux of this issue is that I don’t see how such mutual animosity can help the home buying and selling public who probably assume that agents and conveyancers pull together in order to help them progress their transactions.
Part of the problem is that there are many things that irk both parties, for example:
Conveyancers might argue over whether or not a certain document is needed or not, or one might be prepared to accept an indemnity policy and another won’t. Some will feel they have to report certain things to a lender and others will feel they don’t need to.
Agents, might suggest unrealistic timescales to the seller, or make repeated chasing phone calls, or make it blatantly clear that they have no idea how the legal side of the home buying and selling process works.
Inconsistencies and interruptions like these cause frustration and more often than not, benefit no one.
The other elephant in the room (it looks like there is a herd in there) is of course, fees. Many conveyancers believe that the estate agents’ job is money for old rope. Whilst many conveyancers (until perhaps recently) were, relatively speaking, poorly rewarded for the experience needed and risk taken by them.
Is it beyond the wit of man (or woman) to perhaps come up with a document outlining the Principles of Working Together? Surely we owe that to the home buying and selling public?
Rob Hailstone is founder of the Bold Group, a network of conveyancers.
Looking forward to the replies to this article, I’ve got a funny feeling it won’t end well,
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Same here lol!!
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Well the comments section was looking a little dry recently, so something had to be done to spice it up (insert inflammatory article about Boomin / Emoov / Rightmove /Conveyancing)…
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There are currently about 150 units for sale in my local area. 130 are sold, prices have not budged a penny. A dead lawyer is the mildest
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The comment about referral fees is so blatantly obvious that I am surprised that all parties involved in raising standards haven’t outlawed this already. It is long overdue.
A firm in the south-east recently told a mutual client they could not act for them as they had to prioritise work for their agency client with whom they had such an arrangement.
Soul destroying for staff at the practice, driving clients away. Also driving would-be agents away from our industry, having to face referral fee targets rather than act in the best interest of clients.
It has driven agency fees down as the sale itself generates a smaller proportion of an agents income, hence unsustainable valuations and lower fees are deployed to win instructions.
“A cancer in our industry” ? Absolutely.
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“I was a high street solicitor and my conveyancing practice declined over the years because I did not answer estate agents chase/progress calls”
Excellent formula if you want your conveyancing business to go down the pan.
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Solicitors forget that when their “computer says no” it’s very often the estate agents that go above and beyond to sort the problem out and keep the sale on track. Estate agents add a lot of value to the transaction beyond just finding the buyer and hassling the solicitor.
The negotiations never end, not just the property price, but also about who keeps the curtains. Agents are the oil that keep the deal moving forward.
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200 emails a day is far from extreme, I was receiving 100 emails an hour. People should be grateful they have employment.
These kind of stories are some what tiresome, should the firm that has been quoted not have been prepared for the increase in workload, which has been building for the last 12 months. Perhaps investing in staff, technology and improved processes.
Too many people not at the coalface trying to improve conveyancing, what will a “document outlining the Principles of Working Together” really achieve, quite laughable.
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Don’t be too dismissive, if no-one tries, nothing will change.
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Too many people at the coalface not trying to improve the process might be part of the problem Conveyancer19? In any event, I have my coalface stripes.
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That document could then be used to bring pressure upon the SRA, Land Registry and Lenders to make the system work better. I would hazard a guess that a solicitor from 1900 would be able to carry out a conveyance using the same basic methods as used today. As far as I can see the fundamental system has not really changed and the promises that were made for ‘digital’ back in the early 2000’s have not really come to anything.
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So here’s the thing Conveyancer19.
We are at the coalface and when it comes to technology, I’d be delighted to explain how we are leading the market in its use.
“Being prepared for the increase in workload” is, of course, a valid point, but it wasn’t case volumes that caught us by surprise, but intensity of communications.
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The comments to the Peter Ambrose story the other week demonstrated the conflict between the stakeholders in the industry, not only a conflict between agents and conveyancing but also that there is as much animosity between factions of conveyancers as there are turf wars between agents and models of agency.
I’ve been waiting 7 months for 3 example files to see how it is possible to enable the industry stakeholders to work together, there’s a reluctance to let me have the files because presumably there is doubt of my intentions or the consequences of collaboration. Genuinely, nothing will ever resolve until the envy of success, individual egos or the preciousness of the techies is addressed.
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If Rightmove or a competitor (which is only a matter of time now we are 2021) allows public advertising, agents will dramatically decline overnight.
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Your comment suggests that you think this would be a good thing and, in the context of the lead story, that a dramatic decline in the number of estate agents might ease pressure on the conveyancing process and conveyancers.
Apologies if I have misunderstood or misinterpreted the thrust of your remarks.
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I do have a firm I refer Conveyancing to for a commission but rarely send them leads. Maybe the odd simple 2 up 2 down sale. However, I get a far better return from 2 local High Street solicitors who I recommend to buyers and vendors when they ask. I get these by way of probate instructions and have had circa £20k in fees this year so far. I would have to send 100 referrals to the large conveyancing firm to match this. They also talk to me on my other sales progressions, we have a very good working relationship, and we are keeping it local. I dropped one local firm because they did not send me any probate vals and do not communicate.
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The point that appears to be missing here is that Estate Agents are required to provide sales updates to their clients. By default this means solicitors have to be contacted so that the agent can tell the client what the solicitor is doing. This is a requirement of the TPO membership. Anyone with half a brain can see that this is going to cause conflict and nause between these two parties.It wastes the conveyancers time and sometimes creates Chinese whispers within a chain.
All conveyancers claim that they keep clients up to date and many even have fancy apps to do this, and yet day after day clients phone or email their estate agent to ask how everything is going. My retort to this at times has been to reply ‘did you ever call your solicitor to ask how things were going when we were looking for a buyer?’ (I was swiftly removed from client contact duties in regards to sales progression.)
The NAEA/Property Mark, Solicitors Regulatory Authority, various Estate Agency Redress schemes are all guilty of not creating a joined up system of conveyancing and house selling. It really beggars belief given how long these organisations have been in existence and how much money they collect from their ‘members’ each year.
Come on everyone. Review the way we do conveyancing, create a smooth and simple system using the technology that is available today and improve the system for everybody, especially the people who pay all of our wages, the customer.
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My comment “must not defame an individual or entity nor bring them into disrepute.” Sadly I do not see how we can comment on the failure of our industry bodies (Agency, Law Society, Chartered Surveyors et al) to address these matters without doing so.
It is long, long overdue and the public and consumers have been poorly served.
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I’m the After Sales Manager for a large single office independent agency. We have very strong working relationships with our local solicitors built up over many years and they are happy to update us along the way. We will contact them when there is a need, taking into account search turnaround times for example, but also we are sufficiently trained and knowledgeable to understand the conveyancers updates in order that we can pass them on to clients. Many solicitors know that a quick ‘waiting on local, replies and mortgage offer’ email, perhaps dashed out whilst on hold to a lender, saves them a 20 minute conversation with the client. That’s a conversation we can have instead, perhaps explaining what a local search is etc, freeing up the conveyancers time. There are those lawyers of course who have a policy of not replying to estate agents requests for updates and this makes our job very difficult. We are obliged to update our clients as a sale progresses and can’t do this without contact from the conveyancers involved, but it is also good customer service. Many clients call us saying my conveyancer isn’t getting back to me, is everything OK, can you find out what’s going on – it is after all for many a big deal, maybe a first time purchase or a big move after many years in the same property. It’s known that the conveyancing process seems to take longer and longer as the years go by despite advances in technology, but I guess that’s a topic for another time. If an average sale takes 12-16 weeks, it’s unrealistic to expect a client to wait patiently for the next bit of email/letter correspondence to drop from their solicitor without wanting to know what’s happening in the interim, even if the answer is nothing! Silence and lack of contact plays on people’s minds and they can begin to think something is wrong. We offer reassurance and information, things that keep a chain of transactions together and keep people reassured and happy. A happy client is much easier for us all to deal with than a stressed and unhappy one and this will reflect on agent and lawyer alike as a happy experience when they look back, rather than one they never wish to repeat again. We’re all in this together, we need to behave like it and treat each other with the respect and courtesy we all deserve.
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I have just recieved this:
“Your suggestion of a document for solicitors and agents to work together from – look no further than the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) Protocol – there is reference to who does what and there are things that the agents are stated to do, but agents do not want to engage and whenever I suggest it, and in many cases, even mention the Protocol, I am met with a silence.”
I have a link to the Protocol and will have a read through it, and maybe summarise shortly, if the editor of PIE will allow yet another publication from me!
If anyone would like the link in the meantime: rh@boldgroup.co.uk
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Sounds interesting, has to be worth getting some of it onto this publication and see what people think.
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On my ‘to do’ list:)
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I would ask, does the Protocol conflict in any way with TPO’s ‘Code of Practice for Residential Estate Agents’, particularly:
12. Between Acceptance and Exchange of Contracts
12a After acceptance of the offer by the seller, and until exchange of contracts you [the estate agent] have no direct influence on such matters as the conveyancing process or the mortgage lending process. Your obligations to the client are:
• to monitor progress;
• to assist where possible, as asked;
• to report information deemed helpful to bringing the transaction to fruition;
• where there is a chain, routinely check the immediate transactions and communicate information helpful to bringing your client’s transaction to fruition.
You must keep written or electronic records of such activity.
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I don’t think so. If you want a link to the protocol just email me.
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