Amy: New technology and its impact on conveyancing
solicitors. We've talked a little bit about
how America works. Do you see it becoming
more streamlined? Are you doing any work to
campaign for that in your industry? Is anyone
putting the pressure on?
Pam: Yes and no. I will say, I brought my
props today. My iPad, my phone and my pen
because these are the things that I use for
conveyancing, and ten years ago these would
not be the things that I would use for convincing.
It would very much have been a paper and pen-based
system.
These days, it really is very much electronic.
And so when people say, 'Do I need to come
in and sign contracts?' I've had you do that
already, probably within the first week of
the transaction.
So, that's all done. Everything between me
and the other solicitor takes place electronically.
I call them to exchange contacts, I send them
money, electronically, through the bank.
There's none of this sitting down around a
table and passing contracts and cheques.
When I completed on my first house in 2007,
we passed cheques around the table, sorry,
that was in 1997. That's a long time ago,
now. We passed cheques around the table. I
couldn't get my head around what we were doing.
We don't do that anymore. It's all electronic.
I am hoping that it will become more electronic
and more centralised, with fewer chinks in
the system that can be exploited.
As for my own campaigning for that... We were
actually very early to set up a database that
could be accessed by our clients, documents
that they could download.
That's now become much more systematised with
the Land Registry so you can do that mostly,
within the Land Registry, itself. You can
download documents yourself if you want to.
And yet most people say, 'Oh no, just e-mail
it to me'. 'No problem, okay'.
And that's fine. People just want ease of
use. So, as long as things can be emailed
to them, as long as documents can be signed
and then returned...
It would be great if we can get to electronic
signatures. I don't think we're there yet.
There's still a lot of uncertainty about the
enforceability of electronic signatures but
I think that is the way we are going.
Amy: I agree.
