Legal and conveyancing
Conveyancers and property lawyers, where roughly a quarter of agreed sales never complete and, on no completion no fee, that work was done for nothing.
Where it breaks
A small sample of the problems we hear most often in legal and conveyancing. Not a complete list, and not all of them will be yours.
- 01
A week of onboarding before any legal work
ID, source of funds, terms and the client care letter, all chased by email, all holding the file at the front of the queue. The checking tools handle verification well. What an SRA file review actually tests is the written reasoning behind the accept decision, and that gets typed by a person under time pressure.
- 02
Title and searches are read-every-line work
Registers, plans, searches and the contract pack arrive as PDFs. A fee earner reads all of it to find the six things that matter, and the second reader reads it again.
- 03
“Where's my file?”
Clients, agents and brokers all ring for a status. A fee earner stops work on one matter to answer a question about another, ten times a day.
- 04
Enquiries and replies lost in a thread
Requisitions go out, replies come back, and the record is a mail chain. Answering which enquiries are still outstanding on a matter takes ten minutes of reading.
- 05
The management pack takes six weeks
On a leasehold sale you need service charge accounts, ground rent, insurance, consents and the section 20 position from a freeholder or managing agent with no commercial interest in being quick. A well-run agent turns it round in a week. A self-managed block can take six, and the file sits there.
- 06
Requisitions on a file everyone has closed
The application goes to Land Registry after completion and comes back wanting a signature, an ID1 or a plan corrected. The matter is closed in everybody's head and the fee earner has moved on, so it gets picked up cold weeks later.
What we'd build
A small sample of the kind of thing we build. What we'd actually scope depends on which of the problems above is costing you most.
Onboarding done before the first call
ID and source of funds collected and checked, terms issued and signed, the matter opened and conflict-checked, all before a fee earner opens it.
Days off the front of every matter, and fee earners opening files that are ready to work.
The title read for you, then read by you
Registers, plans and searches reduced to the points that need a decision, with the source paragraph cited beside each one. The fee earner reviews findings instead of hunting for them.
Hours per file back, and a second reader reviewing findings rather than repeating the read.
Status answered without interrupting anyone
Clients, agents and brokers get an accurate position on their matter on demand, taken from the file. The phone stops being the interface.
Interruptions per fee earner per day cut, and clients who stop ringing to ask.
Every open enquiry visible
Enquiries, replies and undertakings tracked per matter and chased on schedule, with the matters that haven't moved this week on one screen. Searches and management packs chased against the party holding them up rather than against the fee earner's memory.
Faster exchanges, and fewer matters stalled on a party nobody was chasing.
Lease and pack read against what goes wrong
When the management pack finally lands it gets read against the list of things that kill a leasehold sale: doubling ground rent, uncapped service charge, restrictive alienation, a short unexpired term, a missing building safety certificate. And a requisition after completion gets answered from the file rather than from scratch.
Deal-killers found early, fewer fall-throughs, and less work done on no completion no fee.
Recognise any of these?
Thirty minutes with a founder. Walk us through the problems your team lives with and we'll talk about whether any of it has to stay that way.