After practising in property law for more years than I care to remember, I have often had reason to reach for the Conveyancing Handbook, and not just to find something heavy enough to prop the door open with.
Got a transaction between connected parties? Look it up in the index and find out. Want to know what to do about a Fire Risk Assessment? Look it up in the index and find out. Want to know what to do in the event of a delayed completion? You guessed it, look it up in the index and find out.
And that’s what most of us DO with the Conveyancing Handbook isn’t it? Use it as a ready reference if we are suddenly seized by a crisis on a file. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. As conveyancing practitioners, we cannot possibly know everything, and having the up-to-date font of all knowledge on the end of your desk is an extremely sensible way to manage risk.
However, in order to review the book for you, you lucky people, I have, for the first time in my career, read it from cover to cover and I was surprised by how much in the way of comprehensive fundamentals there are in there.
My current trainee, an experienced residential conveyancer, has a copy of the book, and is really going back to basics with it. I love the fact that it gets down into this detail. We all get into our ways of working, and it’s incredibly helpful to have a book that goes from a chapter on taking instructions, through agricultural land, rights of way, to rescission and other remedies. Everything, in fact, that we need to do our day job, from start, to finish by means of whatever bumpy (and no doubt unadopted) road the transaction takes us.
Given that I work with the author of the Shared Ownership section, David Keighley, I did pay special attention to that area of the book. Like many other land lawyers, I tend to start wincing as soon as I hear the phrase “Solicitors Form 1”, and carry on in that fashion until some kind soul takes pity on me and agrees to deal with the file whilst I have a recuperative lie down. Reading the chapter made me realise that the process really is far less mystical, than I had thought. I am, probably not alone in thinking that Shared Ownership falls into the category of esoteric, if not to say abstruse. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to. If you have the conveyancing guide about your person, then you will see exactly how prescribed the process is. Broken down, (as all the Handbook is), into step-by-step, easy to understand sections, referring to the varying model leases that have been used, with a comprehensive insight into the 2021 model. Knowing a few solicitors who have come unstuck on the point, there is lots of information in respect of SDLT and Market Value Elections. David has explained staircasing in a way that didn’t make me lose the will to live. For this chapter alone, it’s worth the £110 ticket price.
You probably have a copy of the Handbook kicking round the office, the 17th edition maybe, or even older. Don’t look away, you know who you are. Well, throw it away and get a new one, because you will reap dividends from having the most up to date version of the book, and we all know that old text-books are the most dangerous.
If I had a criticism to make, it would be that you still have to buy a hard copy. In these days of electronic everything I am not entirely sure why this is not a subscription based, online resource. I think that would make it worth an annual subscription for most, if not all, property solicitors.
There is nothing stopping you from carrying on using it as something to dip in and out of, as and when the need arises, but if you don’t do anything else you should familiarise yourself with the chapter headings. You never know when you might need to know where to find something you thought you already knew. If you do read it cover to cover, there is possibly a risk that you will have a cold and sweaty half hour thinking “crumbs, did I do that on that Smith file four years ago?” but better late than never, I say.
After all is said and done, my favourite thing about it is that it’s a book with something for everyone in it, from the fresh out of Law School putative property practitioner to jaded old whatsits like me. Whilst I would like to add something punchier from the Anglo-Saxon, I am not allowed to swear in print for fear of bringing the profession into disrepute, so would say “Its reassuringly splendid”. I think that covers it.
Reviewer: Anna Newport, Newport Land and Law
Conveyancing Handbook (28th edition)
Published: October 2021
Publisher: The Law Society
ISBN: 9781784461737
Format: Hardback, 1376 pp.
https://bookshop.lawsociety.org.uk/p/conveyancing-handbook-28th-edition-hardback/
