Secrets of Conveyancing What Conveyancers and Estate Agents Don’T Tell You

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Secrets of Conveyancing What Conveyancers and Estate Agents Don’t Tell You Introduction I am a former Solicitor, Licensed Conveyancer and Legal Executive with over 29 years’ experience in private practice and running my own firm as well as being a partner dealing with mainly property matters, both commercial and residential. In England and Wales, certain aspects of conveyancing (which is the business of transferring legal ownership of land and buildings) can only be carried out for a fee, reward or gain by solicitors, licensed conveyancers and curiously, barristers. One of the many misconceptions of conveyancing is that it is straightforward and simple, yet year in year out it still accounts for over a third of all negligence and/or breach of contract claims against law firms. Despite what you may have been told or read in the newspapers, land law in this country is still very complex and the Land Registry really only records a fraction of the true position. Yet notwithstanding its complexity, time and time again law firms will delegate residential conveyancing to their most junior members of staff, some with little or no qualifications or experience, to make it financially viable, bearing in mind a senior Solicitor in private practice even in the provinces will probably charge out at between £150 - £200 per hour. It occurs to me that calling a qualified property lawyer a “conveyancer” is rather like referring to a family lawyer as a “divorcer.” In 2007 there were 4446 sole practitioners and 4237 practices with 2 – 4 partners. Combined these firms represented 86% of all solicitors practices in England and Wales employing 31% of qualified solicitors. Accordingly, the vast majority of firms of solicitors have 4 or less partners so are quite small and employ nearly a third of all solicitors despite the impact of large firms in cities. Currently there are 112,589 practising solicitors and this figure is still rising. Clearly we have too many lawyers as the demand for legal services declines. There are only about 850 licensed conveyancers in England and Wales with around 1300 working towards the qualification. The diagram below shows the conveyancing process in one link of a chain of transactions – looks straightforward doesn’t it? © Garners 2011 Page 1 .

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