Firms which do not stay up to date with digital conveyancing tools will fall behind and ‘risk stunting’ progress due to the interconnected nature of conveyancing was one of many sentiments shared at the latest Digital Conveyancing Summit from legal technology provider InfoTrack
Digital adoption and progress was a key theme throughout the day at the conference, which provided extensive updates on the progress being made on end-to-end digital home moving; artificial intelligence; source of funds and source of wealth; and the challenges posed by the introduction of new technology and process into law firms.
Hosted in the heart of the City of London at 22 Bishopsgate, the conference was delivered though a mix of presentations and panels discussions. Alongside expert commentators, coal-face practitioners brought a healthy dose of reality to the day’s content, providing helpful context to the discussions.
But the overriding message of the day was firms will get left behind without introducing digital processes into their firms; whether that is around onboarding, client due diligence and anti-money laundering; connecting with other firms and stakeholders in the course of the transaction; or integrating with the work of agencies like HMLR to digitise their processes.
The summit was launched in 2022 with an associated “digital maturity index” providing conveyancing firms with a benchmark against which their own adoption of technology could be measured. The latest report, released earlier this year, showed almost one third of conveyancing firms have achieved a digital maturity score of 60% or above; but the divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” is growing with the average score between the top 30% and bottom 30% of firms showing a gap of 50 percentage points.
In it’s third year, the Summit achieved over 600 attendees across the day, with 200 attending in person in London, and a further 400+ online and from Leeds.
Describing the day as “productive” Gayle Fordham, Partner and Head of Residential Property at Fisher Jones Greenwood said it was useful to meet with “likeminded progressive individuals within the profession discussing tech and how to empower our sector with the best tools available.”
“Great panel topics such as AI, digitalisation, collaboration, and how building a community and network helps with the stresses of conveyancing,”
Added Samantha Burrows, Partner at XYZ Law. Kate Clarke, Senior Associate Solicitor at David W Harris echoed the sentiments,
“Very exciting to learn about how our world is changing in the digital age and understand what we can do to stay ahead of the game.”
Sessions from the day are now available to review on-demand online.
3 responses
It might help if instead of generalised exclamations of purported benefits real life, practical examples were shared.
Personally I think that the banking system needs to upgrade its technology first of all; then the mortgage application process needs to improve including the sharing of the mortgage application (as part of the risk assessment); and finally the conveyancing process requires more formally trained, qualified conveyancers rather than portals or AI chatbots together with a concerted effort at eliminating Standard, technology generated Enquiries. We use electronic onboarding from Checkboard. The process is only as quick as the honesty of the client as to source of funds.
For me the message is consistent .. “DIGITISE OR DIE” … it’s what your clients want … the barriers are those who are not prepared to make the change and disrupt … you will be left behind!!
#DigitiseOrDie
#AI #ImplementAI
We are prepared to digitise, yet you cannot say “digitise or die” when the technology itself has not yet proven itself trustworthy and infallible. What happens if there is a nationwide outage? How many people in chains are going to get sued? And then you have the untrustworthiness of the information itself – is the technology going to guarantee that buildings are built to a safe standard?