No calls please, we’re conveyancers

Michelle O’Shea has worked her way up through the ranks of conveyancing, starting out as a legal secretary and progressing to forming her own practice, which she ran for 30 years before retiring last year. Now watching from the sidelines, she has some sage observations and words of advice for the conveyancers still taking calls.

I accidentally got into conveyancing in the 1980’s, starting out as a legal secretary and working my up to owning and running my own practice for nearly 30 years. As a recently retired practitioner I have had my fair share of frustrations of 30 years at the coal face of conveyancing and I wanted to share with you some thoughts on how we can improve some of our processes.

Rather than name and shame I want to try and put a positive spin on this in the hope anyone reading who is in charge of such things may decide to change what they are currently doing in order to provide a better experience for everyone.

So I want to talk about automated phone answering systems that some conveyancing firms use but they are not alone, lenders and some estate agents also use them. Here, though, I mainly want to concentrate on the systems conveyancers are using at present.

I am sure that we have all come across the systems where you are asked to press ‘1’ for the red team, ‘2’ for the blue team, or press ‘1’ for team O’Shea and press ‘2’ for team Michelle.

Some systems individually name the people in the team, and in some cases end up reeling off three to four names… You can end up on the phone for a good few minutes before you connect. And, of course, if you’re not listening properly you may miss a name so have no idea what number to press – and go right back to the beginning to listen again.

Most, if not all, conveyancers and estate agents are busy every single working day. In my view, these systems are awful, so I dread to think what the feedback from clients is.

Some of these firms also say something along the lines of: “For onboarding, please press…”.

Now, I personally do not particularly like this word, even though as a conveyancer I know what it means. But I wonder how many lay people actually know what ‘onboarding’ means?

I suspect there are clients who have no idea so never select the right option, when all they want to do is instruct a firm to act for them. Is that firm potentially losing out new business opportunities as a result? Or are calls being answered by other teams incorrectly chosen, thereby wasting time of others?

Surely it makes more sense to speak in our client’s language and say something along the lines of “If you want to instruct us to act on your behalf press…”

The firm I created 30 years ago and have recently left is a small high street firm with four or five support staff who answer incoming calls. Every member of the team has their direct line phone number in their email signature.

Surely that is a much better way and allows anyone calling these firms to get through to the right person more quickly?

Sometimes conveyancers need to speak to the other side urgently; let’s say for for example they are trying to complete an exchange of contracts where there is only five minutes of the release time to enable them to do that. Having to sit on hold listening to all these options before being connected to the right person really is more than frustrating; it could potentially scupper the whole transaction.

Whether its risking fall throughs, missing out on potential new business or general frustrations of hours spent listening to automated messages, I hope this encourages firms to reconsider their current phone systems and make it a better experience for all callers.

About the author

Michelle O’Shea started her career in conveyancing as a legal secretary in the 1980’s before going on to qualify first as a legal executive and then as a licensed conveyancer. She launched her own practice, Michelle O’Shea & Co in 1995, which she ran for 28 years before selling the practice in 2023 and retiring in 2025.