I was out with some conveyancing colleagues on Friday night. It is always a good opportunity to put the world to rights.
One of the things that we chatted about was how we have to make time in our non-working day to do the actual conveyancing work. All of us tended to do an hour before the office opens at nine o’clock and an hour or so after five with time spent at the weekends to do reports on contracts, etc… and I do not think that we are alone in this.
The day is taken up with providing updates to agents, clients, three men and a dog… we are so busy giving updates about what we are going to be doing or what others should be doing that we don’t actually have time to do the things that we should be doing or that we tell others we are hoping to do. So the actual work has to be done out of office hours. I have thought long and hard about how this can be resolved but, knowing that I am not alone in having to work longer hours does help. I know that there is one local firm that purports to close at four o’clock. I say ‘purports’ as they are in fact open after that time but that is to enable them to do the work and make the phone calls that they need to make.
What was particularly interesting was that during the course of the evening, I was introduced to a lady who had just moved house. I hear you all groan as you know what I am going to say. She detailed the flaws in the system, and then made the incredibly bold statement that ‘this can all be solved with technology.’ That sort of statement does somewhat irritate me as if it could be solved by technology, then I am sure it would have been done by now. It is not as if technology companies are not trying to do it!
She went on to say that the problem was that her buyers decided to go on holiday mid-transaction and I pointed out that I was not sure how technology would have solved that (and was not quite sure why she thought it could). But she was definite that there had to be an app which could enable people to move house quicker.
I did say that buying a house was not like buying an item from Amazon as there were so many other variables and the biggest variable was people. All people are different and all react to moving house in different ways and that, most importantly, people change their minds and there is nothing we can do to stop that happening.
What I see is the public do want a better system; but I also see that experienced conveyancers are leaving the profession. Are the two connected? We see so many different companies trying to get technology to improve the system but that is not necessarily the answer.
It takes a long time to train someone to be a good conveyancer. It is not about ticking boxes, but the increased demand for speed and wanting to know what is going on all the time does not help us to do the work and provide the public with the service they need. Perhaps we could agree that we could ask estate agents to ask for updates only when absolutely necessary and only from the solicitor who is paying their bill. Any other suggestions?
This is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. Read more in Today’s Conveyancer every week.
2 responses
Your drinking companion is half right.
The right technology and mindset does reduce inbound questions about progress. We donghus today and it works – so much so that we often get people UK the chain calling us for an update!
Couple of things that work;
-weekly case eviews with updates to client agent and broker
– share outstanding enquiries with client, agent and broker
– share internal checklists through a portal, so we don’t ask our guys to update external systems
When I started out my career some 15 years ago, I did so with a national firm who had contracts with corporate agents. As part of the agreement we had to produce milestone screens and reports that tick off when contracts are sent, mortgage offers are in and search results are in etc. We could also add in a bit of text about key dates i.e. mortgage offers expiring, updates, holiday dates. This was then available to agents/clients and the screen would flash up every time we exited a file so it was always up to date. (Some of you might just sigh at that or say more information breeds more questions and queries). This was however 15 years ago, I am sure there are systems built in to case management databases that allow for something similar so there are these things around and no doubt it would be easy enough to share these in chains. I’m not sure how many firms do this but I can count on one hand and possibly even 1 finger the amount of times I have ever received milestone reports from others. I imagine cost is an issue (i.e. adding modules in) and trust in staff to update these is another.
Technology however is not the answer that will save this industry but it will help. If this kind of thing was available 15 years ago, what is available now? For me, I’ve worked in a few firms since and not once has this been put in place.
Agent’s can help there too; there will no doubt be a system where they can easily share their chain check details, can share details about receiving proof of funding, mortgage offers out etc. I get chased by agents every Tuesday, where does this information they garner go to? It certainly is not going to everyone in the chain. I do sometimes ask an agent to share their chain check and more often than not I get stonewalled. Why do these not get sent with the sales memo at the outset?