Established in 2000, Simply Conveyancing is a firm of specialist property lawyers that provides conveyancing services to homebuyers and sellers nationwide. Today, around 150 lawyers, based across the UK, process between 600 to 1,000 purchase transactions per month.
Dye & Durham’s Lawyer Checker solution forms part of Simply Conveyancing’s due diligence checks, and the firm has been using Lawyer Checker to help mitigate the risk of cyber fraud for residential and commercial property transactions since 2016.
Lawyer Checker quickly and easily verifies the details of the recipient account of the solicitor who’s receiving funds for transactions using a unique algorithm that checks against 10 different databases in real time. It integrates with Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) scam alerts and safeguards transactions against human error and typos. Lawyer Checker’s reports are low cost and can be attributed as a disbursement to offer peace of mind that clients’ funds are protected against cyber fraud through impersonation during a transaction.
In May 2022, as part of firm-wide improvements to increase efficiency through the automation of processes, Simply Conveyancing’s project team — led by Project Manager Steven Guthrie — worked to complete an integration between Lawyer Checker and Visualfiles, the case management system used by the firm. Guthrie said:
“Our overall goal is to reduce the time it takes to process transactions on behalf of our clients.
We time all our processes and evaluate where improvements can be made. The Lawyer Checker integration is the first in a series of third-party integrations we are making to drive further efficiencies across the firm.”
Previously, Simply Conveyancing’s legal teams would manually enter details into Lawyer Checker to obtain verification of bank account details before funds were transferred to their destination. But the new case management integration has reduced the time by 45%, Guthrie added.
“The data entry process that took our legal staff three minutes now takes less than a minute and a half.
Further, 98.5% of Lawyer Checker responses are now returned within five minutes. Our team no longer needs to send emails manually, wait for the result to be returned and then put it in the file, which used to take up to 15 minutes.”
Simply Conveyancing’s lawyers are happy the task is now built into their workflows, meaning they can manage this key due diligence check by themselves without the need for legal support staff. Guthrie stated:
“That gives them more accountability and makes the process faster.”
The integration with Lawyer Checker and Visualfiles took Guthrie and his team four weeks to complete. Dye & Durham provided the connection and Simply Conveyancing developed the bespoke user interface and integration. Guthrie explained:
“We worked closely with our lawyers to find out where Lawyer Checker would best fit with their workflow. The Lawyer Checker team were responsive and helped ensure we could get the requirements for our integration across the line.”
Once developed, the interface was trialed in Simply Conveyancing’s Cardiff office before a firm-wide rollout. Guthrie said:
“The result is that delays have been removed from our processes.
Considering the significant volume of transactions, this process all adds up to increased efficiency and a happier team offering an even better service to our clients.”
Sam Imray, Legal Manager of Simply Conveyancing in Cardiff, is delighted with the Lawyer Checker solution. She said:
“Since we’ve started using the integrated Lawyer Checker functionality, we have noticed a vast improvement in how quickly we can process checks and obtain results. Over a week, this frees up considerable time for myself and my team to get clients moving.”
For further information please see: Dye & Durham – A Legal Technology Company (dyedurham.com)
This article was submitted to be published by Dye & Durham as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.