Jarvis: Leaders need to be bold
Conveyancers spend approaching half of their working day chasing other stakeholders or being chased by them, a report has found.
It also found them more frustrated by the time taken to complete transactions than anything else, including regulatory burdens and high workloads.
Conveyancers said the amount of their time they spent “chasing stakeholders” in a transaction rose by four percentage points to 43%.
Landmark Information Group interviewed 100 residential conveyancers across England, Wales and Scotland for Residential Conveyancing: Looking Ahead to 2025, including managing partners and heads of department.
Moving from fifth place last year to first this as the biggest frustration for conveyancers was the length of time taken to complete a transaction, cited by 53%.
This was followed by the ‘ever growing regulatory and administrative burden’ (47%), the volume of workload/insufficient resources (43%), poor communication among stakeholders in a transaction (31%), and being chased and having to chase them (also 31%).
Researchers commented: “Transaction times remain stubbornly high in 2024, and conveyancers are feeling under enormous pressure to deliver more than ever and quicker than ever; even more so than in 2023.
“This is a problem because many of the reasons for delays in the completion of transactions are outside of the conveyancers’ control.
“Scope creep means that conveyancers find themselves fielding questions that they may not be fully equipped to answer (e.g. climate-related questions). Dealing with some of these questions up front could help with reducing enquiries further down the line.”
Unsurprisingly, faster transactions and less chasing came top when asked what would make their work more productive.
The report went on: “It is clear from the responses to the above questions that the frustrations and risks faced by conveyancers have not gone away, and, in some cases, have worsened.
“There is a positive, however. Our research tells us that 52% of respondents are now taking matters into their own hands by assigning workloads more effectively, while 44% are proactively sourcing new business.
“Conveyancers are also investing in improved training (41%) and digitising more processes (34%).” However, the proportion of conveyancers stating that IT budgets had increased fell by 20 points in 2024 to 44%
“This suggests that while conveyancing firms are continuing to invest, conveyancers might be focused on embedding new technology rather than adopting it.”
The proportion of conveyancers saying AI had helped fee-earners fell six points in a year to 39%. It was seen as being most useful for streamlining general administrative tasks, preparing reports from deeds and property, and “filtering and steering work” to the person with the right expertise.
Researchers said AI was “playing less of a role in assisting fee-earners than one might have expected” this year, but “may bounce back in 2025”.
As last year, conveyancers put more flexibility top of the list for attracting and retaining talent in the sector, followed by enhanced training/development support and better technology to reduce workloads.
Two-thirds of conveyancers said “upfront data insights” for transactions would remove delays earlier in the process, compared to 54% in 2023.
Elizabeth Jarvis, managing director of Landmark Search, commented: “With conveyancers spending nearly half their day chasing stakeholders or being chased, and suffering with a general lack of transparency, the opportunities provided by AI, automation, and integration has never been more evident as we look towards 2025.
“If leadership within the sector can be bold and take matters into their own hands in the same way that other conveyancers have in 2024, 2025 will be a year where many stubborn challenges may hopefully be put behind us.”
There are a raft of other more relevant questions to ask conveyancers. True conveyancers will become a thing of the past and all we will be left with are unqualified “Monkeys with headsets” processing matters on panels under the supervision of a single qualified lawyer. The Law Society and the SRA bury their heads in the sand over the referral fee issue that has seen estate agents promoted to people who think they have power to manipulate clients and conveyancers alike, actually employing “progressers” or harasser’s as I prefer to call them. Estate agents avoid action by trading standards for 2 reasons. Trading standards innability to act and the agents including one line about “the bungs” in their small print contrary to the requirement by TS to place this oin bold in the forefront of T’s and C’s. We couple this with the clients who now seem to have lost all respect for conveyancers and people in general. A sad but true trend of our text and messenger world where everyone now seems to believe that conveyancing should be akin to Amazon with next day or same day delivery.
So the problem is that bribery is rife, firms paying for business because their reputation is so poor they have to buy from estate agents. Read the bribery act. Gaining an advantage over competitors with a back hander. Estate agents lying to all parties (nothing new) to whip everyone into frenzy to make the clients phone and harrass their own conveyancer on their behalf, and clients with very poor attitudes and no respect. What a thankless task conveyancing has become. One out all out!!!