INTERVIEW: Can the conveyancing process ever be speeded up?

A leading conveyancing firm boss says his solution to the slow house selling process now has some 2,000 conveyancers signed up to use it.

A year ago Peter Ambrose (main image), who runs property law firm The Partnership, launched Legalito which is software that “makes the lives of conveyancers easier” and has already been used to complete 5,200 transactions.

But Ambrose tells The Neg that getting his industry colleagues to use this kind of tech, whether its his or the other making similar claims to his within the market, is a big challenge.

He says the big sticking points are that many conveyancers use old software which makes integration difficult and also that many have been ‘burned’ by previous efforts to speed up and simplify the process via tech.

“Also, the legal world is in a bit of a weird place right now – everyone’s fighting among each other and getting a bit ratty so everyone’s a bit distracted and often too busy to take new ideas or processes on board,” he says.

Ambrose says getting agents to use Legalito as a lever to force conveyancers to follow suit “was never going to work”, and instead his team has been busy adapting Legalito’s software to their workflows – for example conveyancers can now make and answer enquiries through their own Word documents.

“Each conveyancer has their own way of doing things for their own reason so there’s not point trying to get them to radically change their ways,” he adds. “One example is that some conveyancers are happy to provide feedback to vendors but not to buyers.

Finger pointing

“The other is that conveyancers are often reluctant to admit that it may be them that’s creating problems, and usually point the figure at the ‘other fools’ within the system.”

Ambrose says that’s why the recent outcry over the Law Society’s new TA6 forms blew up into such a storm – many conveyancers felt it ‘dumbed down’ conveyancing by “allowing everyone else into the party” – i.e. vendors and estate agents.

But nevertheless Ambrose says the conveyancing world needs to find its own solution and that the Government are not going to step in and mandate the use of a particular tech platform or software, as some hope.

“What we need is to gather together the early adopters and those who are keen to make change happen and they will bring along the rest,” he says. “That’s what we’re doing with Legalito, and we’re getting there.”