Thomas Quirke, MD of SearchFlow, gives a search provider’s perspective of how to adapt to a changing market to Today’s Conveyancer’s readers.
It’s been just over a year since I joined SearchFlow, and six months of that has been within the ‘Covid-19 world’.
One thing that really appealed to me when joining the business was the fact that the property industry is on the cusp of change, embarking on a new journey of digitisation and automation.
Since the arrival of the pandemic, technology’s role has been accentuated. During lockdown, the pace of change was rapid with lawyers swiftly transitioning to a work-from-home strategy in order to continue providing continuity of service to clients. Tech, digital data and cloud-based services played a big part in this.
Since the reopening of the market, we have seen instruction levels sky rocket. I believe that this huge increase in demand – driven by a hard and fast deadline set by the chancellor with the Stamp Duty holiday – will see more lawyers turning to digitisation and tech to ensure every transaction can move along as quickly, yet securely and compliantly as possible.
As I see it, law firms of the future will be very different. In fact, I foresee that our industry will witness more change in the next five to ten years than we have in the last 50 years combined, driven by firms embracing digitised data, integration of workflows, online services and increased automation of various tasks.
The pandemic has highlighted to me that underlying trends will be accelerated. Here at SearchFlow, we are leaning into the future, embracing disruption and are fortunate to have the resources required to invest in the next round of innovation, in conjunction with our customers’ wishes.
For firms under pressure to meet the 31st March deadline, I would actively encourage you to review how technology, digitised data and automation may further support your team. Of course, any change is tough however I believe that those that are more open to change or are agile in their approach will ultimately succeed in the long run.
