One of the interesting features of the conveyancing market recently has been the number of conversations I’ve have had with firms wanting to increase the amount of work they receive through distribution/panel partners like ourselves.
I can understand why. Every conveyancing firm has people to employ, infrastructure to support and capacity it wants to utilise, and when transaction levels are not delivering everything a firm might want, finding additional sources of instructions becomes an obvious priority.
What interests me is what happens next, because one of the first subjects that tends to come up when discussing additional volume is price, and specifically whether a firm needs to reduce its fee to secure more work. My response is increasingly to question whether that should be the starting point at all?
What are you trying to build?
I have worked in conveyancing distribution for a long time and have seen plenty of different approaches to the relationship between panels and law firms, but I think the best relationships are those where both parties understand what they are trying to achieve beyond simply delivering the next batch of cases.
From a conveyancer’s perspective, there is an understandable attraction to a distributor saying it can provide a significant number of instructions every month, but I would want to know much more about that relationship before deciding what those cases are worth to my business.
What types of cases are they? Where are they coming from? How consistent is that flow likely to be? What does the panel/distributor expect from the firm? What support will it provide when issues arise, and is the relationship based upon building something together or simply achieving the lowest possible quote?
Those questions matter because volume is only useful when it is the right volume on the right commercial terms.
Price cannot be the only lever
There will always be occasions when a firm wants to sharpen its pricing, perhaps because it has additional capacity or wants to increase instructions in a particular area, and there is nothing inherently wrong with making those commercial decisions.
However, I become much more uncomfortable when the answer to securing additional work appears to be reducing fees to a level which is completely detached from those being charged across most of the profession.
We have seen some examples of that recently, and I struggle to see how it helps conveyancing firms collectively when the industry has spent so much time trying to improve understanding of what conveyancers actually do, and the genuine cost of achieving this.
Talk to most conveyancers and they will tell you about the increasing complexity of transactions, the regulatory requirements they have to meet, the investment required in technology and security, recruitment and retention costs, lender requirements and the considerable professional responsibility they carry throughout a transaction.
Those are not arguments for charging less. Indeed, one of the industry’s continuing challenges is ensuring consumers and other property professionals understand why good conveyancing has a proper value and why the legal work involved in buying, selling or remortgaging a property should be paid for accordingly.
So, when an individual firm prices dramatically below prevailing market levels, the issue is therefore not simply whether it can make that particular fee work. It can reinforce the perception that conveyancing ought to be exceptionally cheap in the first place, making it harder for everyone else to explain why their own fee reflects the actual work involved.
Distribution should not create dependency
There is another side to this which I think conveyancing firms should consider carefully, and that is how dependent they become on any individual source of work.
A distributor/panel offering substantial volume can clearly be attractive, particularly when a firm has capacity, but I have always believed conveyancers are better served by having a sensible spread of business rather than becoming overly reliant on one source.
Commercial relationships change, transaction flows change and distribution strategies change, which means a firm building its cost base around one very large source of instructions can leave itself exposed if that volume subsequently reduces.
The same applies in reverse. If a firm cuts its price heavily to attract work and rapidly fills its available capacity, it may subsequently need to restrict new instructions, which does little to create the consistency either party should want from the relationship.
For me, good distribution is not just about opening and closing a tap. It is about understanding what a firm can handle, where it performs particularly well and how volumes can grow without asking that business to compromise the economics underpinning its service.
Back yourselves on value
Perhaps the message I would give conveyancing firms is therefore a relatively simple one: back the value of what you do. That does not mean ignoring price, refusing to compete or assuming clients will pay whatever fee appears on a quote, because conveyancing operates in a competitive market and always will.
It does mean being confident enough to explain why your service costs what it does and choosing distribution relationships which recognise there needs to be a viable conveyancing business on the other side of every instruction.
From our perspective, when a firm tells us it wants more work, I would much rather discuss capacity, service, technology, communication, specialisms and where it can add something to our panel than immediately ask how far it is prepared to cut its fee.
The conveyancing profession has made significant progress in explaining the complexity and value of its work, in trying to halt the narrative of conveyancing fees having to be at rock bottom levels, and the overwhelming majority of firms we deal with want to compete on far more than price.
Distribution should support them in doing that, rather than merely asking them to prove how cheaply they are prepared to work. This approach benefits no-one in the long run and we should all be doing all we can to move away from this.
About the author
Harpal Singh is founder and CEO of conveybuddy and has worked across the property, mortgage and financial services sectors for more than 30 years, with over 25 years’ experience in intermediary distribution. He launched mortgage packager, Optoma Broker Solutions, in 1999 before moving into conveyancing distribution in 2008 with Conveyancing Alliance Ltd, where he worked alongside John Phillips. Together they launched Broker Conveyancing in 2012, growing the business before the wider group was sold in 2016, with Harpal eventually stepping away from its day-to-day operations in 2019.
Harpal returned to the conveyancing market to launch conveybuddy with John in 2024, having identified an opportunity to improve the way conveyancing services are provided through mortgage advisers and other introducers. As CEO, he is responsible for the overall direction and growth of the business, with a strong focus on clear pricing, service standards, panel management and improving links between advisers and conveyancers. Drawing on his long experience of both mortgage and conveyancing distribution, Harpal is also a regular commentator on the housing and mortgage markets, particularly on the homebuying process, adviser involvement in conveyancing and ways to improve outcomes for advisers and their clients.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Today’s Conveyancer.
