New Conveyancer Profession?

Legalfarmer89 · 06-03-2021 2:01pm #1

https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/conveyancer-profession-on-cards-as-part-of-digital-push/

From the above link, Helen McEntee has asked the Legal Services Regulatory Authority to about the creation of a separate, “Conveyancer Profession”.

What do people think about this? Who will train these new Conveyancers? Will they be under the auspices of the Law Society?

A lot of Solicitors just specialise in Conveyancing. I’m not sure is this necessary. I think the motivation is that it will reduce costs. How does having a separate profession reduce costs I wonder?

Peregrinus · 08-03-2021 3:02am

Well, the training is shorter and more straightforward if you only have to study property law and practice and its associated areas.

We have a separate conveyancing profession in Western Australia. Admission is by completing an Advance Diploma in Conveyancing (which would take 1 year full time) followed by two years' supervised training in a conveyancing practice. You don't need a university degree.

The median salary (NB: not the starting salary) for a conveyancer is about AUD 55k, which is probably about half the median salary for a lawyer. Conveyancers work in conveyancing firms, typically; you don't go to a lawyer when you want to buy or sell your home. (Different story if you were doing a commercial property development, or something of the kind.)

It's relevant, though, that conveyancing is generally simpler and easier in WA than in Ireland, becuse the British basically arrived in the nineteenth century, grabbed all the land, dispossessed the occupants, ignored any rights or interests that they might have, and parcelled out the land to whitefellas using a simple registration system that was in place pretty much from day 1. The history of Irish land ownership and use is much more complex, and that leads to a much more detailed conveyancing system with a lot more bells and whistles in it that in 99% of cases aren't relevant, but you still have to make sure each time that they aren't.

Mr. Incognito · 08-03-2021 10:50am

Great

Cannot wait to see how many people line up to be goughed by insurance.

They will be a lightning rod for litigation.

Robbo · 08-03-2021 12:29pm

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

Great

Cannot wait to see how many people line up to be goughed by insurance.

They will be a lightning rod for litigation.

I'd comfortably predict that if conveyancers become a thing, the professional indemnity insurance costs will mean that they can't survive in the wild for any length of time.

Victor · 08-03-2021 2:57pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, the training is shorter and more straightforward if you only have to study property law and practice and its associated areas.

Surely there is a responsibility on the educators to also teach them about theft and fraud offences and professional standards?

Robbo wrote: »

I'd comfortably predict that if conveyancers become a thing, the professional indemnity insurance costs will mean that they can't survive in the wild for any length of time.

Who is to say that they will exist in the wild and that legal firms won't employ them?

Yyhhuuu · 08-03-2021 3:04pm

I think I recall under the Building Society Act, Building Societies can also engage in Conveyancing. I think introducing Conveyancers is to be welcome to increase competition. I'm sure the Law Society will welcome this!

Lenar3556 · 08-03-2021 7:56pm

Legalfarmer89 wrote: »

https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/conveyancer-profession-on-cards-as-part-of-digital-push/

From the above link, Helen McEntee has asked the Legal Services Regulatory Authority to about the creation of a separate, “Conveyancer Profession”.

What do people think about this? Who will train these new Conveyancers? Will they be under the auspices of the Law Society?

A lot of Solicitors just specialise in Conveyancing. I’m not sure is this necessary. I think the motivation is that it will reduce costs. How does having a separate profession reduce costs I wonder?

I wouldn’t necessarily see a difficulty, as long as standards are upheld, and I would have no reason in principle to see that anything else would be the case. Indeed it could be argued that it might bring about greater standardisation - there is still much variation within the profession when it comes to the quality of conveyancing carried out.

As regards bringing about a reduction in fees, I’m out of the loop in terms of what are typical fees at the moment, but a colleague purchased a detached house in Co. Galway recently and the fee was an agreed €1000+VAT. It wasn’t a particularly straightforward transaction either, dragging on for the better part of six months. In that case he earned his money.

Lenar3556 · 08-03-2021 11:59pm

Robbo wrote: »

I'd comfortably predict that if conveyancers become a thing, the professional indemnity insurance costs will mean that they can't survive in the wild for any length of time.

I don’t see why there would necessarily be a material change to the risk vs the same work being conducted by a solicitor?

Peregrinus · 09-03-2021 3:48am

Lenar3556 wrote: »

I don’t see why there would necessarily be a material change to the risk vs the same work being conducted by a solicitor?

I think the implication is that conveyancers would be less skilled or competent than solicitors.

NeuralNetwork · 09-03-2021 3:52am

Makes sense to me as it’s largely a self contained area of law and mostly a bureaucratic exercise. If anything, it might create a strong specialist paralegal profession that might evolve the whole area in time.

Lenar3556 · 09-03-2021 3:57am

Peregrinus wrote: »

I think the implication is that conveyancers would be less skilled or competent than solicitors.

Which of course is not a reasonable conclusion to arrive at.

Peregrinus · 09-03-2021 4:10am

Lenar3556 wrote: »

Which of course is not a reasonable conclusion to arrive at.

I agree.

Peregrinus · 09-03-2021 4:25am

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Makes sense to me as it’s largely a self contained area of law and mostly a bureaucratic exercise. If anything, it might create a strong specialist paralegal profession that might evolve the whole area in time.

There's going to be a (possibly large, possibly blurry) border between cases that don't require professional legal input and those that do.

Here in WA, FWIW, for an ordinary domestic conveyance, with or without a mortgage, you go to a conveyancer, and neither lawyers nor law firms are involved at all. Same for an outright purchase of a small commercial premises - a shop, say. But for anything large and commercial, for anything involving development, for anything with non-bog-standard tax issues or where the property is the subject of a dispute, you go to a lawyer. The law firm will usually retain conveyancers to deal with the conveyancing aspects of the matter as needed and (usually) they will choose the conveyancers, though if the client wants a particular conveyancer I'm sure the lawyers will work them them. It will normally be an external firm of conveyancers, not in-house conveyancers employed by the law firm.

The banks employ in-house conveyancers to act for the bank as mortgagee in property transactions.

Conveyancers are not qualified to give legal advice. But they do have a professional obligation to advise you if it would be a good idea for you to obtain legal advice, and are supposed to have the professional skill to be able to discern when that is the case.

Ardillaun · 09-03-2021 5:51am

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's relevant, though, that conveyancing is generally simpler and easier in WA than in Ireland, becuse the British basically arrived in the nineteenth century, grabbed all the land, dispossessed the occupants, ignored any rights or interests that they might have, and parcelled out the land to whitefellas using a simple registration system that was in place pretty much from day 1. The history of Irish land ownership and use is much more complex, and that leads to a much more detailed conveyancing system with a lot more bells and whistles in it that in 99% of cases aren't relevant, but you still have to make sure each time that they aren't.

That historical situation describes much of Canada, and conveyancing in my own province of NL is usually a fairly straightforward matter. Two Canadian provinces, BC and Quebec, allow notaries in the conveyancing business. I was surprised to find out that the fight between lawyers and notaries goes back a century in BC:

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, notaries and lawyers lived in relative harmony in British Columbia. It was not until the early 1920s that lawyers tried to eliminate notaries from the legal terrain. The notaries responded by resisting and fortifying their own profession. Newspapers frequently used military analogies to describe the animosity that existed between the two professions before 1930. After 1930, the two professions worked together in greater harmony, with a great deal of privilege-trading between these supposedly rival occupations.

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/4621/3815/0

Robbo · 09-03-2021 10:48am

Lenar3556 wrote: »

I don’t see why there would necessarily be a material change to the risk vs the same work being conducted by a solicitor?

Peregrinus wrote: »

I think the implication is that conveyancers would be less skilled or competent than solicitors.

My point is more that as a risk factor, conveyancing would contribute hugely to a solicitors professional indemnity insurance premium. This is more pronounced in smaller practices where insurance is a much higher proportion of fee income and your selection of insurers is much smaller. Much like all specialist insurance markets, it's only become smaller in recent years, no different to specialist event or activity cover and for the same Brexity reason.

If you're opening a new conveyancing venture without a healthy sideline in say litigation or probate (that the PII companies don't see as anywhere near the risk), you're going to have a hard time finding a premium that doesn't immediately on the back foot.

Claw Hammer · 09-03-2021 1:03pm

Many solicitors undertake not to do conveyancing work in order to obtain lower insurance premiums. I doubt and insurance company would insure any licensed conveyancer.
It might be different when e-conveyancing comes into effect but the current system where there is reliance on undertakings and holding purchase monies and drawing down funds from banks would make it very difficult for anyone but solicitors to operate.

Peregrinus · 10-03-2021 2:30am

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Many solicitors undertake not to do conveyancing work in order to obtain lower insurance premiums. I doubt and insurance company would insure any licensed conveyancer.
It might be different when e-conveyancing comes into effect but the current system where there is reliance on undertakings and holding purchase monies and drawing down funds from banks would make it very difficult for anyone but solicitors to operate.

Yeah. Some reform of conveyancing practices might be needed in order to make a profession of licensed conveyancer viable.

I Ireland, I think that purchasers' solicitors do a lot of work on behalf of the bank that, in other countries, the bank or the bank's lawyers do themselves. That might have to change. The result might be lower conveyancing costs, but higher mortgage fees.

As a possibly relevant point, here in Western Australian convenancing transactions (that are mortgage-financed) are settled actually at the bank. The purchaser's and the vendor's conveyancers both attend at the bank for a tripartite meeting at which a conveyancer on behalf of the bank satisfied themselves that good title is being given and that a good mortgage is being granted before he authorises the transfer of funds.

Robbo · 10-03-2021 10:28am

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yeah. Some reform of conveyancing practices might be needed in order to make a profession of licensed conveyancer viable.

I Ireland, I think that purchasers' solicitors do a lot of work on behalf of the bank that, in other countries, the bank or the bank's lawyers do themselves. That might have to change. The result might be lower conveyancing costs, but higher mortgage fees.

As a possibly relevant point, here in Western Australian convenancing transactions (that are mortgage-financed) are settled actually at the bank. The purchaser's and the vendor's conveyancers both attend at the bank for a tripartite meeting at which a conveyancer on behalf of the bank satisfied themselves that good title is being given and that a good mortgage is being granted before he authorises the transfer of funds.

Three way closing was the practice here for decades. The over-reliance on undertakings was obviously a major problem after the last crash where both sides exposed the awfulness of them as a system. Michael Lynn and others making a mockery of the system on the conveyancing side and the bank hastily suing the solicitor on foot of the undertakings to recover duff mortgages (sometimes on the double) on the other.

I'd imagine that if conveyancers become a thing, three way closing needs to return or the system of undertakings / certificates of title will need drastic reform.

Claw Hammer · 10-03-2021 2:13pm

Robbo wrote: »

Three way closing was the practice here for decades. The over-reliance on undertakings was obviously a major problem after the last crash where both sides exposed the awfulness of them as a system. Michael Lynn and others making a mockery of the system on the conveyancing side and the bank hastily suing the solicitor on foot of the undertakings to recover duff mortgages (sometimes on the double) on the other.

I'd imagine that if conveyancers become a thing, three way closing needs to return or the system of undertakings / certificates of title will need drastic reform.

That article doesn't mention that in 1987 it was made illegal for the banks to charge the borrower for the investigation of title. That si why the current system based on under6takings developed and the vreason for all the fruds is that the banks did nothing to police it and put no resources into maintaining a central undertakings register.

This whole licensed conveayancer rubbish is the usual nonsense of blaming the legal profession for a mess that is not6 of its own making. Conveyancing fees are quite keen given the amount of work involved and the overheads of solicitors. Quite how licensed conveyancers are going to have lower overheads has no0t been explained. The assumption must be that they will work for lower fees than solicitors i.e accept lower profits. I would think any difference in the fees charged by licensed conveyancers and solicitors will be minimal.

The real problem is why conveyancing is so difficult, which is something tghat needs new laws and procedures. That would mean work for politicians and civil servants. Rather than do that they come up with this nonsense. The real problem is not with profiteering it is with antiquated procedures and ancient and complicated laws and registration systems.

New Conveyancer Profession?

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