If we’ve learned anything from the US elections it’s that doing paperwork in advance doesn’t guarantee a speedy outcome.
Sitting around for days waiting for the result and being powerless to speed things up, had a very much Conveyancing 2020 feel about it.
Whether it’s voting slips or FENSA certificates, just because you ask for information up front, doesn’t make the process go any quicker.
Maybe that might help those who think that it will solve all the delays in conveyancing might wake up and smell the coffee. Or they can keep peddling the same message, Trump-like, convinced they are right and the real world is wrong.
Work from home if you can
The inherent problems in conveyancing are being exposed by a number of issues including increased caseloads and a refusal by law firms to recruit more staff.
It didn’t help with Boris going on TV again and confusing everyone with his complicated slides containing what turned out to be wrong data. The result of which is that lawyers have once more been banished to their bedrooms like errant teenagers.
Which is really bad news for home buyers and sellers.
Because let’s face it, if they’re sitting on their bed with a ropey old laptop, desperately searching for a Word document on their company servers, it’s no surprise things are slower than they’ve ever been.
And wrong.
In the heady days of Lockdown#1, people raved about work-life balance and the efficiencies of remote working. Given the daily deluge of signed contracts, contract packs and letters we receive from lawyers for properties we have nothing to do with, I beg to differ.
When it comes to conveyancing, other than an extra hour in bed, there are few benefits from home working.
Can we speed things up?
If the delays in conveyancing were caused by clients taking time to fill in property forms and stick some guarantees in an envelope, then boy, we’ve got a simple problem to solve.
Getting “seller ready” is a trivial part of the process – a handy improvement but reducing it by a couple of weeks is small beer – very much like putting lipstick on a pig.
The fundamental problem is that case details are held in a lawyer’s head. No fancy cloud-based communicating platform available on an iphone is going to solve that particular issue.
The key is changing the way we collect and store data. Before anyone mentions the new BASPI form that is waiting on printing presses, no, that really is not the answer.
Information must be collected at source, automatically. Whether it is Land Registry for titles, local authorities for searches, management companies for leasehold details or clients for answers to enquiries, this must be structured and automated.
Obviously changing the way organisations hold data is a huge challenge. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t move blinking towards the light. As an interim measure, technology can be used to analyse this information automatically by reading the documents and drawing out their key elements.
This analysis would then be used to produce a Report on Title and raise enquiries; core activities that today can take anywhere between four and seven hours. These enquiries must then be tracked centrally, rather than using the industry standard Post-It note system in use today. (Take a moment to recognise the plight of lawyers sitting on their beds surrounded by files and yellow notes.)
Reducing the time to produce reports and raise enquiries is the key element in speeding up the conveyancing process. Holding enquiries in a way that clients, lawyers ( and agents ) can view and respond directly, will reduce the confusion that this most time-consuming element of conveyancing brings and will have a major impact on transaction times.
Conclusion
Solving the conveyancing conundrum is not a simple one.
There will always be complex legal matters that need to be addressed, whether it is a Deed of Variation that needs drafting or additional terms that need to be added to a contract.
However, removing the manual elements of the process that lawyers currently have to endure, will allow them to focus on resolving those issues quicker and more efficiently.
This is in stark contrast to the simplistic idea that getting information upfront solves all the issues. As Mr Trump will testify, just because you can get information in advance doesn’t necessarily result in a quicker answer or the one you actually want.
Peter I totally agree, solving conveyancing delays is a ‘bigly’ problem, and in many ways your point ‘The fundamental problem is that case details are held in a lawyer’s head. No fancy cloud-based communicating platform available on an iphone is going to solve that particular issue.’ – is in many ways at the core of the current, cripplingly slow, snail pace, paper led proposition that everyone who wants to gain title of a property has to go through.
Like King Canute – a seriously large phalanx of conveyancers are sitting at the edge of the shoreline, feeling that the waves will not wash over his/their legs, ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings,’ are the words attributed to this Danish King as he illustrates that there are stronger forces at work in this case nature, than the divine rule of kings (conveyancers and solicitors).
The sea is a metaphor for the million plus buyers who each year have to brave the legacy driven waters of residential conveyancing and the million plus vendors, all of who are at the ‘mercy’ of the intellectual prowess locked inside the cranium of solicitors. Well the world has spun on since King Canute – and though some of the solicitors I have dealt with in the past 36 years may act as though they are in the twelfth century, we are in 2020, and AI and ML, is actually more efficient than the human brain, especially when it comes to repetitive and known, inputs and outcomes.
What is missing from the conveyancing sector is investment in technology, the mortgage lending industry is certainly moving forward, recently, last month Google Cloud announced its intention using a new AI tool Lending DOC AI, this will turbo charge the facilitation of mortgage offers.
The way I see it, the tide is both turning and coming in, and the conveyancing and legal profession instead of seeing themselves as having divine knowledge and powers, and being the ‘gatekeepers’ need to understand there is nothing, and I mean nothing that code and mathematics can not do more quickly and on a 24/7 digital basis.
I could be wrong, but the very fact that multi-billions of dollars are being poured into cloud technologies tells me I might have something.
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Upfront information is a red herring, as it is already called a ‘contract pack’. The delays in conveyancing are caused by:
1. shoddy ‘upfront’ information not complete/checked by the selling lawyer
2. conveyancers who have taken on too much work and so dictate to get it off their desk, or are simply not same day, next day or even that week (and who simply do not treat the file as it it were their very own sale/purchase)
3. conveyancers who are not skilled enough to offer pace especially when anything taxing comes along that requires thought.
We just have to live with the current system as there is nothing at all in the pipeline to change the quality of the actual conveyancer doing the job.
Happy Christmas.
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I think I suggested something similar a few months ago during a previous rant on this website! If the land registry or similar organisation held all the information such as planning permission, section 106 agreements, road adoptions etc, a lot of time would be saved and there would not be excuses for not getting the process going quickly.
I have just sold two properties, using different conveyancers on each. One took six months, which was always going to take a while, but imagine my issues when our solicitor started asking for information at the last minute which could have been asked for in month one. The second conveyancer cost £1500 but, the contract went out within two hours of instruction and exchange happened in five weeks. It could still have happened quicker if the other side had not waited until after searches to ask questions which had nothing to do with those enquiries!
My experience is that the system can run more quickly but is fundamentally not set up to do so.
In my opinion, more publicly available information along with a historic conveyancing pack for the property could turn the conveyancing side of this into a couple of hours work, prior to search results and mortgage valuations and bring far more surety to the process.
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“if the other side had not waited until after searches to ask questions which had nothing to do with those enquiries! ”
Simply this, confirm a sale out in writing, wait up to a week or often more for letters of authority/ML/proof of ID etc, contract goes out and then is rarely if ever processed same day with search fee’s sat in client account ready to go, our local authority currently circa 25 working days turnaround so from the issue of MOS the file is mothballed for nearly 2 months before anybody is remotely interested in it when the policy is to wait for searches before raising enquiries. I cant think of any work flow in any other industry like it. madness.
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The Government has made it clear that if I can’t work from home I can go to work. However, having just woken up (I no longer need an alarm, because I can start work when I like), and now sat up for the day to work from my bed, I am sipping (and smelling) my coffee, and, having managed to fire up my ropey old lap top, reading Peter’s latest musings.
Being an ex-HIP provider himself Peter was (and I believe still is?) an advocate of information up front and, like many, fully realises that it will solve some, but not all of the delays in conveyancing. But that view would not make, what I think is supposed to be an amusing but relevant piece.
Increased caseloads, hmmm? Most firms I know have, in the last few months, have put their fees up and reduced or limited their caseloads. I could take issue with a lot more of Peter’s observations (particularly the ill-informed BASPI comment), but I think I will nod off again, get up at lunch time, have a few tinnies and then do some online gambling, whilst sat in my pants and string vest. Happy days.
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Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones…..perhaps ones own service levels should be looked at before trying to right the wrongs of the conveyancing industry.
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I couldn’t really let this go without a comment!
This wasn’t an article about service delivery, it was about delays in the process and how potential ways to address them.
Given the current turmoil in the industry that EVERY company is experiencing, such a comment sadly plays to the gallery that lawyers’s favourite pastime is the “blame game” which is unedifying at best.
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Sitting in their bedrooms with shoddy laptops?
Well that could be sorted in a jiffy if the law firms were not so tight and equipped their staff with modern tech. Their fees are more than high enough to afford this. And they owe it to their clients to be properly equipped at home and in the office, if they are going to take a fee from them.
It’s far more about shoddy work ethics and arrogance than laptops I’d say.
I can’t tell you how many clients tell us that when they instruct their solicitor to act in a sale or purchase, they are told by their solicitor that they will not speak with agents during the transaction
Anyone looked at the dictionary definitions of cooperation and customer service lately?
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A bit of a non-story really. Yes we all know conveyancing is a mess and at the moment is suffering from the worst standards probably ever. But there are no solutions offered here and, to be fair, there probably is no magic bullet as we have all said before ad infinitum.
The usual suspects mention technology as the answer but as anyone who knows anything about conveyancing will tell you no machine can do the job better than a competent, able, experienced human being. Plenty of firms using technology prove that.
Therein lies the crux of the real issue. At the risk of being labelled condescending for merely stating a fact, there are quite simply only a tiny minority of conveyancers left doing the job who know what they are doing and more importantly, know why they are doing it and take a pride in their work and have a passion for doing it and putting their clients first. Probably not enough people view conveyancing as a long term career.
Too many conveyancers are spending too long complaining because they are not used to what were normal market conditions twenty years ago. It’s unbecoming and embarrassing and creates a bad impression.
Too many companies exist within the process all taking their little cuts or having their say so that the vested interests mean one procedural chain of events will never be possible to impose.
Too many conveyancing firms are run by businessmen with little conveyancing knowledge and only an eye on how much money they can make. They view actual conveyancers with contempt, whilst seeing conveyancing as an industry, and betray their true leanings by labelling it such. It is still as far as I am concerned a profession, even if it is peopled by fewer and fewer actual professionals nowadays.
Too many Conveyancerrs are going on holiday without arranging proper cover from experienced Locums and leaving already stretched staff to try and stem the tide in their absence. Whatever happened to customer service? Again it is embarrassing and begs the question, “why are you taking on the work?” It just shows a basic lack of understanding for what conveyancing entails, and contempt for the client.
Training conveyancers to do the job would be the obvious answer undoubtedly but nobody is interested in doing that even if they had the time.
So no answers from me either, and my views I know are completely opposite to the writer’s. Which goes to show there is just no easy solution at either end of the spectrum other than crack on and do one’s best. At least I can retire soon!
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Yes, I agree with you. Part of the point I made was that one conveyancer cost a lot and got the job done quickly (albeit that once contracts and information went to the other side all questions then raised were forwarded to us with in minutes of receiving!) We the client also had to play our part and drive the process forward.
My main point is why does conveyancing have to start as if there has never been a previous conveyance? If land registry or another organisation held the information and made it easily available at least 75% of enquiries would not need to be raised therefore increasing the speed of transaction.
Sorry I disagree with the column that upfront information is not a HUGE part of speeding things up.
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The communication around the core data is key and this is the key aim of the Residential Logbook Association. Setting the core data fields so they can be transfered between owner and suppliers is cruitial. tjhm
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