Conveyancers are caught in catch-22

In a recent article published on EAT, a member of Situ accused property lawyers (conveyancers) of failing to recruit to cope with increased demand in the property market. They argued that this is slowing down the home moving process and increasing the risk of transaction aborting.

In the same article, Situ member Andrew Oulsnam commented that estate agents are building their teams and lawyers are failing to follow suit.

Below I will try to explain why recruiting conveyancers is becoming an increasingly thankless task. But before I do, please consider two basic facts:

Most conveyancers work on a fixed fee basis and therefore don't want transactions to be delayed or to abort
It is relatively easier and quicker to find, recruit and train an estate agent than a conveyancer

Conveyancers are paid to make sure that buyers end up with a property without unknown restrictions coming to the fore, that they can live in it happily and can eventually sell without difficultly. Conveyancers normally have two clients that they owe a very high duty of care to, the buyer and the lender.

When I was working flat out as a conveyancer, about 10 years ago, my working week consisted of starting at 6.00 am, then spending the next three hours opening the post and DX, dictating as many replies to incoming letters and correspondence as was possible. Between the hours of 9.00 am and 5.00 pm I saw clients, took calls, exchanged contracts and tried to do some legal work' i.e. reading and perusing: Transfers, Conveyances, Title Deeds, Leases, Planning Permissions, Building Regulation Approvals, Replies to Enquiries, Guarantees, Mortgage Offers, Surveys, Solar Panel Agreements etc. I could go on and in reality the only time I could do most of this legal work' was when it was quiet, either after 5.00 pm or at the weekend.

If I didn't double dot every i' or cross every t' twice, I ran the risk of missing something and subsequently being sued by my client and/or the lender. The last thing I would want is a higher Professional Indemnity Insurance premium or being removed from a lender's panel.

In a recent case, won by Santander against law firm R A Legal, the judge said that if a conveyancer sent his Certificate of Title (CoT, the form requesting the mortgage advance) to a lender, before all title and other relevant checks had been completed to his satisfaction, he was being dishonest. Many exchanges and completions take place simultaneously or very close together these days. The main reason being that the conveyancer is being asked to agree a completion date that is only a few days away when they have not received all of the required documents or carried out all of the checks they should. However, in order to meet that completion date, many conveyancers have sent out their CoTs before they should (before exchange). A sensible and prudent conveyancer would now stop doing that, virtually making simultaneous exchange and completion a thing of the past.

I appreciate that some conveyancers are slow and uncommunicative but most are, more often than not, placed between a rock and a hard place. Conveyancing is a stressful, moderately paid job that requires experience, knowledge and a range of skills to execute properly. It is no wonder that those who left conveyancing are reluctant to return and youngsters are not flocking from universities to become one. I gave up in 2005 after nearly 30 years. Would I return Not over my dead body. But it doesn't matter what I think, my wife wouldn't let me because my work life balance is now much better.

There is no easy answer, but in an ideal world (or at least my ideal world), a conveyancer would start work at 8.00 am; work from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm with only essential interruptions and leave their offices by 6.00 pm. With this scenario in place, they wouldn't mind doing a few hours more on a Saturday or Sunday behind closed doors with no phones and no emails to interrupt them. Bliss!