The conveyancing conundrum

There's an elephant in the corner of the room.

I'm fairly sure that many Directors/Partners of law firms are aware of this elephant but just refuse to look in that corner and address the fact it's there.

In the 80's, the average house price in the UK was ￡39,500 (thirty nine thousand, five hundred pounds).

The cost of conveyancing for that property was averaging ￡350 plus vat (so around 1% of the value of the property).

The average house price is now ￡308,000 and the cost of conveyancing if you look online at the cheaper end of the market is around ￡350 plus vat (so heading towards 0.01%)

The risk is literally 10 times more whilst our fees are 1/10th of the price (much, much more than this if you factor in a savvy consumer and our litigious culture).

We then have the Legal Ombudsman so even with the best structures, you are going to deal with them every now and again (we run at between 1 and 2 per thousand files). The impartial service they offer could be argued may not be entirely impartial as it appears that they only get paid if they find against the law firm but this is just an off the top of my head thought and I am sure they do a marvellous job).

Then we all "have" to have a case-management system. This saves time. It keeps an accurate record of all activity on the file and will even assist with accounts.

Strangely enough, when you go back before case-management systems, a Solicitor with a Dictaphone and a secretary was still completing on the same number of files a week as we do now (I can feel conveyancers nodding their head at this).

The only difference was that in 1980, the average wage was ￡6,000, rent was cheap, insurance was cheap and you could fill up your car for ￡12.60 and have 4 pints of beer for ￡1.40.

Law firms could make really good money in conveyancing and the the conveyancers were paid well.

Now here is the crux of this message; conveyancers (qualified or not) are now paid the same as a call centre worker.

So, you get good grades, go to collage, then university, then do your LPC or train to become a licensed conveyancer...then Mavis who worked in a butty shop and now works in a call centre is getting paid more than you.

I honestly believe it takes years to become good at it (5 to become good, 15+ to become great). I only count myself as a good conveyancer as I still have lots to learn (I do other things as well) but the injustice is that you can spend 20 years and end up earning less than someone who talks to you about your new mobile phone upgrade.

And...the risk. The risk and the stress and the impossible demands.

The problem is that law firms cannot pay more. We pay as much as we can (and we personally match city firms for pay but only work 35 hours a week and have more holidays) but we can't pay more because the market rate is low.

Is there a fix?

There is a fix but you may not like it.

1) we have to change culture/custom

2) we have to change conveyancing

I'll expand on these in another article but the very quick explanation of these two points is:

A1) We need to stop down-valuing our time. Conveyancing is a very complex area of law; we need to change the public opinion on this.

A2) Conveyancing is broken. There is no reason it should take 12 weeks. By cutting the time down to 28 days, you will be able to do double the files (most of the time is spent in updates anyway)

I think it's time we start a revolution; come along, bring a friend.

Gavin.