When you’re enjoying “date-night” with your partner and you’re scrolling through LinkedIn during one of those awkwardly quiet moments, if you’re connected with anyone in the property business, you’ll see the usual complaining posts.  

I’m not talking about lawyers complaining about the incompetence in the industry, agents berating lawyers who don’t answer the phone or brokers criticising lenders for slow service, but the myth that property professionals blame for the delays in the home buying and selling process.

If you’re not a subscriber to the belief that giving lawyers some half-completed forms and a few cheap searches earlier in the process will speed up conveyancing, you’ll blame delays on the volume of cases that lawyers are dealing with. There are strong and valid arguments for this and with many running over 80 cases with limited technology and support, it’s no wonder transaction times continue to hover around 120 days.

Which is why, as you’re tucking into your Carbonara Especiale, you’ll see lawyers urging their fellow dinner-LinkedIn-reading clients not to choose their lawyer purely on price.  They argue that as it’s the biggest purchase that they will make in their lifetime, price should not be a factor – there are so many things that could go wrong.

Low fees or greedy business owners?

Whilst there are some other factors that cause delays in conveyancing, such as a lack of response from clients and external third parties, there is evidence that shows lower caseloads do speed up response times, which, anecdotally, reduces transaction times.

Given that reduced caseloads should reduce the time involved for lawyers to get paid, why then do they take on high volumes of work?  It’s either due to low fees or the undiluted greed of law firm owners to maximise profits and ignore the risks this causes.  As most law firm owners are lawyers themselves, who enjoy sleepless nights worrying about insurance renewals, the number of the latter is vanishingly small. 

So why don’t property lawyers charge more for their work?

The problem is – people just don’t care

For many, it’s caused by the same issue facing agents – a lack of both confidence and competitive differentiation from those who offer low fees to win work.  Obviously, it’s not that simple, as considerable work goes through distribution channels so the final price is higher, but the outcome is the same – higher caseloads combined with lower cost people doing the work.

The problem is very difficult to fix.  Whilst the words used are offensive, it’s easy to understand why frustrated lawyers take to LinkedIn repurposing unfunny memes berating clients for choosing on price, or even the ultimate sin; using the “agents’ pet-lawyers” from “conveyancing factories”.

It starts with the mistaken concept that clients should know how much they should pay for conveyancing.  After all, they are paying for a lawyer’s time – if they have any experience of the divorce process for example, they know it can cost tens of thousands of pounds to get the best outcome.  It’s not that people don’t want to spend money on legal fees, it’s that they don’t want to spend it on conveyancing. 

It’s easy to see why.  When people are buying a property, they just want the deal done quickly – they know the process is stressful and irritating, but long delays are expected and the risk of a problem caused by poor advice from property lawyers is rare.  As lawyers and agents, we’ve seen first–hand the problems that can arise with difficult freeholders, unmortgageable properties and unexpected costs arising after purchase.  But most home buyers do not, and where there are issues, such as the Building Safety Act, it’s the client that suffers, with lawyers rarely bearing the responsibility.  

Which is why, unlike divorce, clients don’t put a value on paying more for decent conveyancing, because frankly, they see little risk of something going wrong due to their choice of lawyer and due to chains, its going to take ages in any event.  As the classic client first liner shows; “it’s just a simple house purchase, there’ll be no problem getting it though in six weeks”.  Price DOES become the critical factor, as there is little perceived risk in the process – after all, what can possibly go wrong?

Which is why, having paid £35 at Café Italia for an over-salted carbonara and stodgy pizza, when “date–night” comes around in July, you’ll remind each other that the experience was fine, it wasn’t that expensive, so let’s book the same place so we can spend time on our phones somewhere other than the sofa.

Peter Ambrose is the owner of The Partnership and Legalito. 

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