Kumar: We need to keep spreading the word
Licensed conveyancers are targeting schools in an effort to improve recruitment and raise the profile of the profession.
Claire Richardson, deputy director of authorisations at the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), said the CLC had “taken the term ‘licensed conveyancer’ from being just a professional qualification that people probably happened upon, into the National Curriculum”.
Speaking at the CLC’s first Futures Roundtable event earlier this month – focused on younger members of the profession – Ms Richardson said it was important to raise the profile and understanding of the profession.
“Schools, colleges, parents and careers advisors don’t say: ‘Oh, you’re a fantastic project manager, do you really like people? Can you manage a high-paced work environment? Have you thought about property law?’”
Ms Richardson said the CLC had been doing “lots of work around that”, for example with apprenticeships or the new T-Levels, a vocational alternative to A-Levels. “People will be able to take a property pathway in the law T-Level”.
Meanwhile, Vicki Redman, head of training at Swiitch, the conveyancing arm of national law firm Shoosmiths, told the roundtable it had recently extended its outreach programmes beyond colleges and universities to schools, to make contact with students at an earlier stage.
Along with promoting conveyancing as a career, the roundtable heard that there was a need for consumers to understand better the work conveyancers did and its complexity.
Natalie Moore, director of Tamworth firm Aconveyancing, said: “Being the regulated provider of professional services within the home-buying process, it kind of all falls on us.
“But clients don’t understand, and they don’t want to or don’t need to. There’s a need for more education and, frankly, respect.”
Speaking after the event, CLC chief executive Sheila Kumar commented: “Becoming a licensed conveyancer is a hugely attractive and rewarding career. It is incumbent on all of us to continue spreading the word.
“Licensed conveyancers and licensed probate practitioners are a vital part of the legal ecosystem supporting consumers through some of the most momentous times in their lives.”
In a separate development, the CLC has argued that its rules on price and quality transparency, introduced in 2018, are having “a significant, measurable impact” on the conveyancing market.
Reporting to the Legal Services Board on its progress to increase transparency, as required by the board’s statement of policy on empowering consumers, the CLC pointed to the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s 2024 tracker survey, which showed that 54% of consumers who most recently used a licensed conveyancer shopped around for that service, compared to 48% of those who had recently used conveyancing services from all providers and 41% for all legal services.
The CLC said failures to comply with its expectations in this area were “generally easy to remediate and have not proved challenging”.
But the submission went on: “We cannot be complacent, however. Overall levels of shopping around could be increased, clearly, and the CLC is committed to continuing to bear down on consumer complaints.”
The proportion of transactions involving licensed conveyancers that result in complaints to the Legal Ombudsman is roughly one in 400 transactions, and only around 1 in 2,750 results in a full ombudsman decision.
The CLC said the figures underlined “the very high levels of satisfaction with licensed conveyancers” shown in the tracker survey – 91% of consumers satisfied with both the outcome and service.
The regulator is still in discussion with ombudsman about using its published data: “Once the data is clean and reliable, we will consult on ways that it could be made available to consumers.”
The CLC has also decided to adopt the British Standard definition of vulnerability and will be advising firms on how to put that into practice in their work, and is part way through joint research with the Bar Standards Board and CILEx Regulation that aims to find ways to tackle digital exclusion more effectively.
Leave a Comment