Knights, the UK’s fastest growing legal and professional services business outside of London, has almost doubled in size during the past 18 months. Adoption of technology has long been central to Knights’ growth strategy as it seeks to improve processes to the benefit of its professionals and clients. As part of this, Knights has been using Search Acumen’s commercial platform ForeSite for a long time.
COVID-19 highlighted areas for further improvement. The pandemic presented a huge challenge to traditional processes and paper based ways of working as Local Authorities were forced to shut and delays in search times became protracted. At the same time, having to respond to these challenges created an openness to embracing new ways of working.
Across its offices, Knights’ real estate professionals use ForeSite in the management of large scale, complex property portfolio transactions.
John Loney is one advocate of ForeSite. As a Partner in the Asset Management team supporting clients on a range of corporate, commercial and real estate matters, he uses ForeSite particularly at the very outset of a transaction as it allows him to provide early comprehensive advice to his clients on any specific issues that could be important later on. The team also widely uses ForeSite to drive efficiencies throughout the transaction process.
John has found that by using ForeSite, he can take a snapshot of information that is crucial to a property transaction progressing at the outset, rather than having to wait three to four weeks (and sometimes more) for search results to be returned. The tool enables John to easily identify potential risks and show them to clients straight away. It means that he can avoid situations whereby a transaction progresses and incurs costs, only to collapse once search results throw up issues a few weeks in.
