The thing about social media is that it can become quite negative. I always worry about posting anything because comments can often get out of hand.
A frustrated driver posts about how he was overtaken on a country lane and there are comments about the poster’s bad driving or insinuations that he was too slow and he deserved to be overtaken. You know what I mean…And that is how I feel about all of the recent comments about the new TA6.
Is there anybody out there who uses it? Likes it? Likes the idea of working with estate agents earlier in the transaction? Because from the comments I have seen , it is as if it is the worse thing that there has ever been. But with this in mind, why would anyone post about how good the form is? Why would any conveyancer say – yes, I am using it, it is cutting my transaction times as there is more information earlier on in the transaction which can help to iron out difficulties sooner. The reason that no one says this is because there is the underlying negativity of all things on social media and the fear of being trolled.
And tech? Why is it assumed that tech is a bad thing for conveyancing? Used well and when needed, it will help. Think back ten years or more – the Land Registry said that all registrations were going to be ‘on line’; no need to send any documents in the post; they were going to have a portal and we can scan our documents and they will receive them through the air and then update the title and send them back to us through the mystery of the Portal. And mortgage offers – all put through the portals of lenders… Submitting a certificate of title through a portal would have been unimaginable ten years ago, but here we are, doing these things on a daily basis. There is a lot of tech out there but it is for each firm and each conveyancer to decide what works best for them.
I am glad that I am coming to the end of my conveyancing career – I have embraced the tech that has been presented to me as a way of making the lives of me, my staff and importantly, my clients better, but we are not slaves to tech. Used wisely it can make the process better.
2 responses
The information contained in the form is information that a buyer should want and be entitled to so for me it is a good idea in theory. However, a lot of the information is not what a Conveyancer should want or need or should have to deal with. Conveyancer’s should only be interested in the legal title. Our job is hard enough as it is without adding to it. As far as I am concerned, a lot of this information should be presented to buyers on viewing the property. They can then go ahead and do the checks necessary to proceed. Buyers should be doing more (level 2 survey, snagging survey, gas check, electrical check, septic tank check) but they seem to want to get out of that by placing responsibility on conveyancers.
For us, we need to go back before we can go forward; make sellers provide more upfront information on marketing, get buyers to take on more responsibility, get conveyancers back to doing what we are trained to do and then we’ll see swifter transaction times and fewer abortives.
The reason no conveyancers are posting that they like the new TA6 and it’s cutting transaction times is because they’d be lying through their teeth if they did.
Also, no-one is against tech. Tech has its part to play and it’s use will continue to grow. What we’re all fed up of is lawtech hyperbole and the idea that tech can replace highly skilled and qualified conveyancers. Over-reliance on tech and under-reliance on skilled staff is a principle characteristic of all the worst conveyancing outfits in the country.