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The founder of property website Rightmove enters the law today with the intention of making his online conveyancing service the market leader within three years, Legal Futures can reveal. It is being marketed on the basis of service quality, rather than price.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority could “mystery shop” conveyancing firms to check whether their costs information and publicity about charges are misleading, it has revealed. At the same time, the Legal Services Board announced that it is to consider a major review of conveyancing.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has substantially reworked its new rule on conflicts of interest, which will come into force later this year. Legal Futures has had advanced sight of the 563-page SRA Handbook ahead of its publication on 6 April, although the new Code of Conduct is just 54 pages.

So only 200 conveyancing firms have signed up to the Law Society’s conveyancing quality scheme? I don’t know how many conveyancing firms there are, but I’m going to make an educated guess that there’s several more than that.

The fragmented nature of the conveyancing market has been laid bare by figures showing that nearly a third of the 9,000 legal practices which registered dealings with the Land Registry last year handled 10 or fewer transfers. While MyHomeMove made almost 10,000 applications for transfers in 2010, 834 firms only made one application the whole 12 months, according to Land Registry figures.