Digitisation does not mark the death of the traditional conveyancer and will actually put lawyers back into the trusted adviser role they used to have, a roundtable held by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has heard.
The event – which aimed to understand the frustrations of consumers with the system – also strongly backed more upfront information and said there needed to be better education about what conveyancers do.
Rob Hailstone, founder of the Bold Legal Group, said it was “a small rump of firms pushing back against digitisation”, lawyers who feel it “takes away the skill, the knowledge from the job. It possibly threatens their job in the future. They distrust technology, a lot of them”.
For Stephen Ward, the CLC’s director of strategy and communications, this was exactly the point – digitisation actually puts the conveyancer back into “the trusted adviser position, rather than de-skilling”.
He said: “AI, whether next year or in five years’ time, is going to be doing all of this, all of the data collection and sorting and even the flagging of some of the key points. This will free up the conveyancer to bring their skill and experience to bear on the work done by the machine, really understand the client’s needs, and give the appropriate advice on that basis with empathy.”
Charlotte Local, legal director of Enact, agreed that this fear of dumbing down the conveyancer’s role, or even making it obsolete, was misplaced “when you consider all of the elements that a conveyancer has to do”.
Paula Higgins, founder and chief executive of the HomeOwners Alliance, suggested complaints about the home-buying process focused less on speed and more on certainty. “People do not really care about conveyancing. They just want to buy and sell houses and that is it. They are quite shocked at how protracted the procedures are when they only go and buy and sell every once in a while.”
Noel Hunter, chair of the Consumer Code for Homebuilders, agreed that consumers “very much feel they are being done to as opposed to doing. This is the largest purchase of a lifetime and access to appropriate information at the time of purchase would help to give more control to the buyer”.
For Emma Toms, chief executive of the New Homes Quality Board, consumers did not understand the value of conveyancing either and it would be helpful if this was better explained, especially given that – as Paula Higgins said – they are often the bearer of bad news.
“In a way, showing what disaster has been avoided could be quite useful to explain,” she said. A further problem, though, was that where something does go wrong, “it is very hard to figure out who to go to, who to blame, who to go to for compensation, who can get things put right. You have so many different codes and ombudsmen”.
Though there was strong support for upfront information, Charlotte Local highlighted the difficulty of getting the whole market to move together: “There have been many valiant efforts to try and get more done upfront, but I think we have about 4,000 firms that practise conveyancing in this country, and trying to get them all aligned and doing the same thing is not easy.”
It was about getting the agents to buy in, said Rob Hailstone. “I do not think the consumer would worry too much if it was sold to them in the right way. It might cost you £150 to £200 upfront to instruct your conveyancer, but they would do this, this, and this, and then, when you find a buyer you hit the ground running. You can save two or three weeks or even more.
“But the agents are nervous about recommending that kind of process to their seller client in case they say, ‘We are going to the agent down the road because he is not saying I have to pay £150 or £200 upfront’.”
For all that many of the moving parts in the home-buying process are not the conveyancers’ fault when they seize up, the profession cannot be absolved of all blame, acknowledged Charlotte Local.
“Cases do turn over so much slower now that conveyancers feel like they need to have a bigger caseload to get the same amount of income. Do you then end up in a vicious cycle where you cannot pay enough attention to the cases? And you are having to do more on the cases too.”
While large operations like Enact do some things quicker than smaller practices, often through the use of technology, “there is only so far that you can take it”, she continued. “I am not convinced that anybody can get particular gains on anybody else because you are always reliant on the next firm.” This might breed apathy among some firms, who are resigned to the fact that transactions are taking longer.
“In my ideal world, you would have your Land Registry title number and then next to that you have everything else that you need. It is just all there ready for you to take away.”
Speaking after the roundtable, CLC director of strategy and external relations Stephen Ward said: “One of the great challenges is ensuring consumers understand the role conveyancers play. Upfront information will help, as they will become involved earlier in the process, and digitisation will assist in a better flow of information, but ultimately there is no silver bullet.
“Everyone involved in the home-buying market has a responsibility to explain the process and manage expectations of understandably anxious clients – it serves nobody to crack up the stress unnecessarily.”
