Property
Paralegal banned for dishonest emails as supervisor cleared
A paralegal who lied to solicitors in one email and to a client’s relative in another has been banned – but the solicitor who supervised her exonerated.
Majority of conveyancers do not want binding sale contracts
Seven out of 10 conveyancing solicitors do not want the government to introduce mandatory binding contracts for offers to buy homes, research has found.
Exodus of conveyancers “will make transaction times even longer”
Transaction times will get “longer and longer” regardless of “how many new houses you build” because of the number of conveyancers leaving the market, MPs were told this week.
Call to tackle low-cost conveyancing as part of home-buying reform
Stronger regulation of the “high-volume, low-value conveyancing sector”, as well as a review of fee structures, is needed as part of home-buying reform, the government has been told.
Suspended suspension for “manifestly incompetent” solicitor
A “manifestly incompetent” solicitor who facilitated one fraudulent and three potentially fraudulent property transactions has been given a suspended suspension.
Fast-growing conveyancing firm bought by private equity
A conveyancing law firm only set up in May 2021 has been bought by private equity in a deal that values it at £25m.
Vos eyes machine-made decisions for property disputes
Many property disputes “could be amenable to machine-made decision-making” in the future, the Master of the Rolls has predicted.
Land Registry data puts spotlight on law firm errors
Most of the HM Land Registry customers will avoidable requisition rates of 20% or more are law firms, new figures have revealed.
Estate agency praised for dropping referral fee demands
An estate agency has been praised for publicly disavowing future demands for referral fees, describing them as “the quiet scandal” in the industry.
Digital property pack wins government data prize
A digital property pack which combines multiple sources of data into a “single source of truth” for conveyancers and others has won a government prize worth £50,000.
Conveyancers starting to cut down on ‘avoidable’ requisitions
Efforts to reduce the number of avoidable requisitions that the HM Land Registry has to make are working, new figures have shown.
CLC launches accelerated ‘experience’ route to qualification
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers has launched an accelerated route to qualification for fee-earners who have been working for at least four years in conveyancing or probate.
Conveyancer cleared after exchanging contracts on day of instruction
A solicitor has been cleared of misconduct when acting on the exchange of contracts for an elderly client’s property on the same day he was instructed.
Land Registry “will automate all simple requests” by 2035
HM Land Registry will have “automated almost all simple requests to change the register” by 2035, offering “a near-instant service” for home buying and selling.
Test shows ChatGPT still falling short in key areas, says conveyancer
The latest version of ChatGPT provides first-time buyers with better answers than it did two years ago but still falls short in crucial ways, conveyancing solicitors have warned.
Blog
From AI ambition to operational reality
AI is no longer an emerging technology on the horizon. It has become the connective tissue binding law, regulation, risk and commercial decision-making.
From text to world: The legal significance of multimodal AI
The next phase of AI, already underway, will integrate text with vision, sound, motion and even touch. This will produce systems that no longer ‘read about’ the world but perceive it.
The new leaders of law
Where once many law firm owners remained technology sceptics, a growing number are now shaped by leaders who are digitally fluent and commercially oriented.
