The UK’s largest independently owned legal IT provider, Eclipse Legal Systems [1], has announced integration with the new ‘Lawyer Checker’ service.
Lawyer Checker is an online service that allows a purchase conveyancer to gather further information on the seller’s conveyancer. Specifically, the service identifies if bank account details provided by the buyer’s conveyancer have a track record of use in conveyancing.
Lawyer Checker was born from a need to avoid a growing trend for fraud, whereby a fictitious firm, or disqualified firm, would pose as a legitimate conveyancer. Some fraudsters have even gone so far as to enter their details into the SRA list of solicitors’ practices, thereby assuming an initial mask of legitimacy. Lawyer Checker analyses a database of law firm client account numbers to see if the account requesting funds is one that is ‘known’, or if the details appear to be new (or infrequently used). The service can provide further checks on over ten databases including Land Registry previous transaction data, CQS list and FCA Registers to provide a comprehensive report on the entity associated with that account.
Eclipse’s Proclaim Case and Practice Management Solutions now enable conveyancers to action a Lawyer Checker search at the click of a button – the search can even be triggered automatically as part of a workflow process, at pre-defined points. The results of the check are then used to judge the risk of sending funds to the suggested account.
Tracy Blencowe, Business Solutions Director at Eclipse, comments: “Lawyer Checker adds a valuable risk control element to conveyancing. Our Proclaim Conveyancing systems are in use at over 200 law firms, and this tool is a great fit for practices wanting to add an extra dimension to their risk management processes.”