The role of the conveyancer has changed considerably over the past two decades. What was already a demanding legal process now sits alongside an increasing range of regulatory, administrative and client service responsibilities, all of which compete for the same finite amount of fee earner time.
The government has acknowledged the scale of that change. In its 2026 consultation on reforming the home buying and selling process, it said that the role of conveyancers has expanded significantly in recent years and that the conveyancing part of the transaction was taking an average of 60% longer in 2025 than it did in 2007. It pointed specifically to additional anti-money laundering requirements, increasingly complex property titles and greater lender requirements as factors contributing to the workload.
Those pressures are easy to recognise in practice. Conveyancers are expected to undertake detailed legal work, communicate with clients and other professionals, satisfy lender requirements, complete anti money laundering and source of funds checks, manage increasingly complex compliance processes and deal with the administrative stages necessary to move a transaction through to completion and beyond.
None of these responsibilities exists in isolation. Each new requirement adds another task, check or potential delay to a process that already involves multiple organisations and significant dependencies. The cumulative effect can be considerable, particularly for firms handling busy residential caseloads.
This raises an important question for conveyancing firms. Which parts of the transaction genuinely need to sit with the conveyancer responsible for the legal work, and which are better handled by a specialist?
There will always be elements that require the judgement and direct involvement of an experienced property lawyer. Advising on title issues, interpreting contractual provisions, assessing legal risk and guiding a client through an unusual or difficult transaction are obvious examples. These are areas where the expertise of the conveyancer is central to the service being provided.
Other parts of the process require a different type of expertise. SDLT is a good example. It is a specialist area of tax with rules, reliefs and exceptions that can produce materially different outcomes depending on the facts of a transaction. Treating it as another routine post completion task can create unnecessary risk, particularly where fee earners are expected to deal with it alongside everything else on the file.
This distinction matters commercially as well as operationally. Every hour spent dealing with specialist processes outside the core legal work of the transaction is an hour that cannot be spent progressing complex matters, advising clients or dealing with the issues that specifically require a conveyancer’s expertise.
The challenge for firms is therefore no longer simply to ask how quickly their conveyancers can work. It is to look more closely at how work is distributed across the department and whether specialist tasks are being placed with the people best equipped to handle them.
Technology is part of that conversation, but it is not the whole answer. The government’s current proposals include greater digitalisation, reusable anti money laundering checks and the development of standards for the use of AI in conveyancing. These initiatives are intended to reduce duplication and improve efficiency, but technology alone does not remove the need for specialist judgement in areas where the underlying rules are complex.
Firms may also need to consider centralisation, process redesign and the use of external specialists. The objective should not be to remove the conveyancer from the transaction, but to ensure their time is concentrated on the work where their legal expertise creates the greatest value.
At Compass, this is exactly the issue we see with SDLT. Our role is not simply to take an administrative task off the conveyancer’s desk. It is to provide access to dedicated SDLT expertise, helping firms reduce the risk of incorrect calculations while also freeing up valuable fee earner capacity.
As the home moving process continues to evolve, the role of the conveyancer is unlikely to become less demanding. The more useful question for firms may therefore be not what else their conveyancers can take on, but which parts of the transaction are best handled by specialists.
Find out how we are supporting professionals with land tax calculation and submission.
This article was submitted by Compass as part of an advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the advertiser and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
