Legal Reform - New profession of Conveyancer to be considered

Brendan Burgess

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Section 30 requires the Authority, following appropriate public
consultation, to furnish reports to the Minister in relation to—

• the creation of a new profession of conveyancer — to be
provided within such time as may be specified by the Minister,
and
 
This sounds like a good idea. The Authority must review this topic and report to the Minister.

It is certainly worth considering. I don't know the pros and cons of taking this from solicitors.
 
What the [broken link removed] said


25. Transferring the ownership of a house, apartment or piece of land from one person to another is known as conveyancing. Legally anyone can do it for themselves, if they have the necessary time, knowledge and confidence. However, most people prefer to employ a professional.


26. In Ireland, solicitors are the only professionals allowed to provide conveyancing services. In Britain and Australia, specialist professionals known as “conveyancers”, or “licensed conveyancers”, also offer conveyancing services and are regulated to protect consumers in a similar fashion to solicitors.

27. The Competition Authority strongly recommends the introduction of a similar profession of conveyancers in Ireland. This would lead to downward pressure on conveyancing fees and more consumer-focused and innovative ways of providing these services, such as use of the internet and offering services outside normal business hours without any reduction in the level of consumer protection. The UK’s Department for Constitutional Affairs says that, while conveyancers have secured only 5% by value of the market for conveyancing, the average cost of conveyancing a £65,000 house fell by 25% between 1989 and 1998. Licensed conveyancers in England have comprehensive websites, give on-line quotes and operate outside normal business hours.
 
Is this really a good idea? I'm not so sure. The cyclical nature of the Irish economy and property markets means that specialist conveyancers will thrive in boom times but may not survive recessions. Consumers could be left high and dry in relation to title issues etc if their conveyancer goes out of business. At least solicitors, for all their faults, have other work to fall back upon when their conveyancing workload collapses, and this means that they can at least pay the bills.

I would attribute the relative success of specialist conveyancers in the UK to the larger critical mass and stability of the UK economy.
 
Section 30 requires the Authority, following appropriate public
consultation, to furnish reports to the Minister in relation to—

• the creation of a new profession of conveyancer — to be
provided within such time as may be specified by the Minister,
and


I'd be worried that this simply cannot work - it seems led by the aspirations of people who don't seem to understand the building industry.

By far the greatest number of solicitors that became redundant of which I am aware were those specializing in conveyancing during the 'Noughties.

Even those employed by companies who hadn't developed expertise in other disciplines in law had to be let go when the property market collapsed.

Of course, this is all just anecdotal and hearsay, but there is a certain logic to it and the cyclical nature of the building industry is well known.
 
Oviously I have a vested interest as a solicitor, but I do not think creating licensed conveyancers would be any benefit to the public becaseu

1. Desspite recent legislation conveyancing is still more complex here than in England adn Wales

2. There has been huge downward pressure on conveyancing fees.

3. As Onq mentoned there are many unemployed or under employed solicitors about.
 
There is a fear that all of these recommendations are carryovers from the Celtic Tiger Era, where there was a different perception of where Ireland was going and by how much it was growing.

I think the proposed recommendations for "improving" the legal profession need to be looked at in terms of actual deliverables and not just commented upon from a "first principles" perspective, which is how some of these suggestions look to me.

Suggested specializations like this can only be supported by a larger population over a wider geographical and economic spread - it might work on a UK-wide or a Europe-wide basis, but then we'd be looking at harmonizing laws and not just bringing economies broadly into line.
 
Legally anyone can do it for themselves, if they have the necessary time, knowledge and confidence. However, most people prefer to employ a professional.

Just looking back on this and having read a number of deeds over the years - as a sort of CPD - I cannot agree with the implication above.
Parsing the sentence carefully, one sees an unequal alignment of "what people can legally do" with "what they can or should do".
Then it brings in a word like "confidence", which sounds like "competence" but isn't and seems misleading in context.

We recently had one thread on AAM criticizing a building professional for not apparently inspecting a building properly or certifying it in accordance with the facts.
In point of fact this is a relatively straightforward act for an experienced, competent person.
Yet the above comment appears to imply that in terms of conveyancing "anyone could do it".
Not so, in my experience.

The archaic language of land law, the convoluted clauses and sub-clauses of the texts, the poor quality of the mapping and notation - sometimes isolated part plans without even a north sign - is NOT something most people without training in reading legal documents AND comparing maps could attempt with any chance of success.

Moving on to actually drawing up the Declaration of Identity, for sell-on of apartments or land or houses, and requirement of in-depth checking of overlapping and adjoining titles not just at the present time, but going back in time to the primary deed and identifying subsequent parcels of land hived off from it and you will see just what a minefield conveyancing can be.

Even trained solicitors do not carry out ALL of a conveyance - they usually require the vendor to retain the services of an architect or engineer to swear out a declaration because this involves the comparison of maps.
Where trained solicitors have drawn up the Declaration my comparison of the maps with the document usually reveals a minimum of one or two errors which cannot be signed off on.
Where I list the folios and attempt to cross reference them in a draft form, an inspection by a solicitor may reveal errors on my part.
That's with a trained solicitor and a competent building professional looking over the document.

I gave evidence in support of a colleague in court recently and one of the last utterances from the lay-defendant on oath was offered after a flick through review of the Report he hadn't paid for, saying "I could do that."
It didn't impress the judge, it clearly wasn't factually true and the sooner lay-people start realising that there is a need for the professions and their education and training is an investment that needs to be paid for by their earnings, the better.

So is it the intention behind "anyone can do it" comments that the standard of conveyancing in Ireland should fall to what a layperson might produce - or does this pave the way for undermining the professions in general?
Following this line of thought, should all unemployed architects and solicitors who have a calculator now set themselves up as financial advisors?
Farcical.
 
I think onq has made a lot of good points here. Personally, I wouldn't like to see thistype of work being somewhat taken away from solicitors anyway.
 
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