I am proud to be a solicitor.
I am regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and I have never thought about moving over to regulation by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. However, from what I have read this week, it seems to do so would make my life easier.
I have written before about all the different titles those who practise conveyancing are given: case handler, legal assistant, paralegal, conveyancing fee earner, property consultant and so on.
But when it comes to the public and their interpretation of what conveyancers do, I doubt they check which regulator sets the rules for a firm and what checks and protections are in place.
With that in mind, there was a decision published by the CLC this week which made me catch my breath.
When a senior partner in a conveyancing firm approves, “expressly or impliedly,” the transfer of hundreds of thousands of pounds from client account to office account; “instructs” an accounting assistant not to inform the CLC that the partner was aware of the transfers being made without supporting documentation; “puts pressure on the assistant” by suggesting if he did not do so “a large number of people may lose their jobs”… Then we need to consider the risk to the public.
Client money is sacrosanct. And we must maintain the reputations of solicitors working in conveyancing and licensed conveyancers.
The SRA is often accused of being harsh on firms, with its strict AML policies and large fines for offences that it freely admits never placed clients at any risk. In this case, the CLC believes “a fair and proportionate resolution” of the admitted misconduct, which involved a failure to protect client money, warranted a fine of just £7,500.
This column is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. The views expressed are those of the author and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
Read more in Today’s Conveyancer every week.
6 responses
The CLC should be removing practising rights for this firm/person. Simply not acceptable to just fine them and allow them to carry on regardless.
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) was created by statute in the 1980s. The CLC would regulate a new breed of conveyancers who would widen access to conveyancing, while preserving the ethical spine that had long defined the legal profession. Its legitimacy rested on a simple constitutional understanding that plurality of regulators must never mean plurality of ethics.
But reading the latest ‘Diary of a High Street Conveyancer’, it is hard to avoid a more uncomfortable question. Was the original settlement ever intended to give a minority regulator the discretion to unpick the ethical fabric that binds the behaviour of all property lawyers? Because what the case in the article exposes is potentially a deeper structural problem, a regulator whose apparent enforcement posture has drifted from the standards most members of the public associate with lawyers, and far from the expectations now made explicit in the Legal Services Board’s ethics guidance published last month. That guidance could not be clearer. Ethics must be embedded in training, supervision, culture, and leadership. It is mandatory, not discretionary.
And on that measure, the CLC leadership now faces a regulatory mountain to climb.
Simple change the law so clients funds are held outside solicitors/conveyancers, can not understand why they are allowed such access to cash. It is a danger to the client and the company. Strange how this is allowed to be the case, for example in lettings industry deposits, millions and millions in value has to be registered with regulated body, with the legal profession the only oversight is when a company goes pop and financial irregularities come to light. True 99% of the profession like most professions are not criminally minded, but it is the 1% that all stakeholders need to be protected from. Fully aware internally each company has internal officer/ checks and balances and procedures, but abuse occurs when the environment allows.
And what’s to say those outside stakeholders are not going to run off with client money and make moving day even more sluggish than it already is? It’s the few naughty ones that give the rest of us who do our best to toe the line a bad name.
I had a firm as a Licensed Conveyancer 1995 to 2004 and I also was an elected member of the Council. Back then, regulation by the CLC was considered draconian – it was a small profession and a precious Compensation Fund (in the early days reduced to a paltry sum by a fraudulent actor). The regulation of the solicitors’ profession then – pre SRA, I think and still Law Society – was considered very lax over a much much bigger profession. Seems, maybe, since the disbanding of the Council board and the current arrangements, the coin has flipped – solicitors are heavily regulated and Licensed Conveyancers less so?
I think the major issue with the CLC is its “jobs for the boys ethos”. In all their pronouncements they never once give the impression that anybody there has a grasp of conveyancing in the current climate, and how they can be a regulatory body when clearly not having members who have worked as conveyancers is staggering. It allows some of their members who we all love to hate to reduce the conveyancing profession to the wild west. That is not what they were created for I am sure.
Two tierd regulation creates bad conveyancing, and the sooner the CLC is overhauled and peopled by experienced,able ex-conveyancers, then the more likelihood that the bottom feeders “regulated” by them are actually brought to heel.
In fact here is a suggestion for you CLC? I retire in October after 44 years as a conveyancer. Emply me as one of your inspectors and I will soon assist you in rooting out those bad apples you regulate, we all know who they are.
How is that for an offer?