The third edition of the British Conveyancing Awards is just around the corner. Alongside a new, larger venue and a new headline sponsor in Groundsure, #BCAwards2023 is all about recognising and rewarding the herculean efforts of conveyancing superheroes who, despite hurdles aplenty, continue to go above and beyond to help clients move into their dream home.
Ahead of the splendour and celebration on the 21st March, Today’s Conveyancer will recognise those who help make the event possible through a series of “Sponsor Spotlight” pieces. Here, we speak with Rob Gurney, Managing Director, Ochresoft, Risk & Compliance Champion of the Year category sponsor.
First of all, tell us who you are and what you do?
Ochresoft is a well-established and specialist team of legal and technology professionals. Our wide range of expertise and experience in these areas allows us to offer legal practitioners a market-leading workflow and risk management solution.
Intelliworks Conveyancing is designed and continuously maintained by lawyers on our team to track regulatory and compliance updates on a daily basis. It focuses on areas of importance to fee-earners and busy law firms. Offering end-to-end task-based workflows, it utilises comprehensive business rules for financial performance, compliance, and risk management, reducing administration from instruction to closing the file and beyond.
Our legal and compliance team ensure that the latest legal developments, content, and best practice protocols are actively deployed so law firms can meet compliance and productivity targets while delivering excellence to their clients.
What prompted you to support The British Conveyancing Awards this year?
Conveyancing is getting ever more complex, and we want to show our support to the amazing work being carried out by the profession.
How can Ochresoft equip firms to manage transactions and look after clients’ interests despite the current difficulties facing the market?
Our bespoke property workflows are both content-rich and easy to follow, meaning firms can have confidence that all matters are being handled thoroughly and consistently. Our products are fully maintained and updated in-house so that users never need to worry about regulatory changes or amendments to best-practice.
Intelliworks makes conveyancing firms more efficient, meaning less time spent on each case, which has a direct impact on profitability. Our innovative pricing structure works in the firms’ favour when the industry experiences volume fluctuations (such as we are currently experiencing), as we do not work on fixed licencing costs, unlike many other case management providers.
What do you see as the key hurdles the sector must overcome in 2023?
The big issue at the time of writing is keeping the work pipeline full. The recent drop-off in new instructions is certainly hitting the sector right now, and our hope is that firms are not impacted too heavily as a result. When the market does come back, we will inevitably need all the capacity we can muster to service demand and avoid another “logjam” such as the one experienced in the post-Covid surge. The unpredictable spikes and dips in transactional volumes we have witnessed over the past few years makes it challenging for conveyancing firms to operate in a stable, efficient, and profitable manner, and this is, we believe, the biggest hurdle the industry faces.
Contrarily, what do you see as something conveyancers should look to with excitement as we move into 2023?
The most exciting thing for me is the sheer size of the opportunity to improve our industry. We know that transaction times are ever-increasing (our latest data shows that buying a home now takes 133 days to complete), yet clients employ conveyancers in 2023 with click-and-buy expectations. These factors combined create challenging times for conveyancers – which cannot be sustained in the long-term. I’m very excited about the technology improvements that will be forthcoming to remedy this.
