Conveyancing: Shortage of authorised persons
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has launched an accelerated route to qualification for fee-earners who have been working for at least four years in conveyancing or probate.
The ‘professional experience’ route allows fee-earners to bypass the Level 4 diploma, which qualifies them as a conveyancing or probate technician, and progress directly to the Level 6 diploma, after which they can work as a licensed conveyancer or probate practitioner.
To be eligible, they must be currently working in a qualifying law or accountancy firm in England and Wales, have at least four years of continuous experience as a conveyancing or probate fee-earner, be supervised by an authorised person, meet the competency standards set out in the CLC’s statement of occupational experience, and provide a signed letter of support from their employer confirming their role and responsibilities.
The CLC said this was “an effective way” for employers to tackle the shortage of authorised persons in conveyancing and probate.
Claire Richardson, director of authorisations, said: “This will hopefully embolden more people, perhaps those have taken time out and are daunted at the thought of returning to study, to realise their potential, underlining the CLC’s continued commitment to making qualifications as inclusive and accessible as possible while maintaining our usual high standards.”
Simon Law, chair of the Society of Licensed Conveyancers, described the move as “an important step forward in ensuring that conveyancing remains an attractive and accessible profession”.
Separately, the CLC’s quarterly confidence tracker has shown that confidence in the housing market has fallen to its lowest level this year amid uncertainty over the impending Budget, with 75% of property professionals saying people were putting off moving house until the Chancellor’s plans were known.
Only 42% were confident in current market stability, down from 64% the previous quarter.
The research also found that just 14% of those surveyed believed the speed and efficiency of the conveyancing process was improving, with 62% not confident.
The average wait between an offer being accepted and completion was still around three to four months, according to most respondents, while 16% said transactions were taking five months or more.
Finally, the CLC has published its first AI and technology principles and supporting guidance.
The non-mandatory principles set out high-level expectations around the responsible use of AI and technology.
They include ‘Explainability’, which means: “Practices should be able to interrogate how technology produces outputs or makes decisions, particularly those impacting clients, and provide appropriate and understandable explanations when asked.”
The principles also highlight the importance of licensed conveyancers maintaining “effective oversight and meaningful control of technology enabled or supported decisions, advice or other outputs, including through human review where appropriate”.
Practices should routinely monitor the risk of technology-enabled decisions, advice and outputs “being biased, unfair or discriminatory”.
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