Over the past decade, there are few industries that the digital revolution hasn't touched - and conveyancing is no exception.
Here, Jo Grey, legal director at Grey Smith Legal, talks about the impact that technology has had on the sector, and what’s next for the industry. Digital technology has accelerated and spearheaded growth across industries, and that includes ours. In the olden days – just a few years ago, relatively speaking – the law in general, and conveyancing in particular, was a labourintensive field, with the bulk of information still kept as paper copies. This was time-consuming and unsustainable, leading to a poorer client experience overall and the potential for costly delays and mistakes.
However, over recent years, the power of technology has been harnessed across a number of aspects of the conveyancing profession, making the sector fully equipped for the demands of today’s housing industry.
Electronic signatures
One of the simplest yet most revolutionary advances has been the electronic signature, which negates the need for clients to trek to their solicitor’s office to sign every last document. With e-signatures, clients can sign each piece of documentation as and when it is available, as opposed to when they can next get time off – speeding up the entire housebuying process. In 2020, no less an institution than the Land Registry signalled that they would start accepting digital signatures as well as wetink ones, prompted in part by the difficulties of obtaining real-life versions during repeated lockdowns. However, it has also issued guidelines for their use, to guard against potential misuse and fraud – something that, unfortunately, digitalisation can sometimes make easier.
Digital register
While the Land Registry has been digital, in some regards, since 1993, and has offered an online customer portal for nearly five years, later this year it will launch its first mandatory digital service. From November, it will only accept digital applications for changes to existing Register Update applications (AP1s) – not scanned or PDF copies – in what it said would streamline the end-to-end conveyancing process. In a blog announcing the change, the Land Registry’s chief executive Simon Hayes wrote: “The pandemic has changed the way we work over the past 20 months, especially in the use of technology. “With more of us working from home, the ability to access and work on documents online at all times has become even more critical for all of us, and the move towards paperless systems and processes has accelerated.”
The portal, which has been live testing since April 2021, has already handled more than 100,000 applications submitted digitally and certain applications have seen a 25 per cent reduction in errors, which are checked automatically.
Virtual onboarding
Conveyancing involves a lot of form-filling, much of the time with fairly standard information – something many clients, in these days of online life, find alienating. Digital client onboarding for conveyancing matters could be the solution, something legal tech firm InfoTrack has started to offer. Its eCOS platform uses a portal to connect law firms with their clients and digitally onboard them, thus condensing a process that used to take weeks into just a few hours. It also allows them to verify their clients’ identity and funds securely, without the need to face-to-face interaction – something that has become increasingly important over the past couple of years. The Land Registry has also launched its first Digital Identity Standard, which provides a secure way for firms to identify their clients digitally. The digital process reduces the risk of fraud, making transactions easier and faster, while also providing an example of best practice when it comes to adopting a digital-first outlook. T
