Uninusured Conveyancing Firms About to be Named

Legal Futures has this morning reported that the Solicitors Regulation Authority are about publish a list of those law firms which were to have closed on 29 December because they failed to secure professional indemnity insurance. With approximately 100 firms to be closed it is reasonable to assume that many firms conducted conveyancing.

The SRA action is likely to be a response to increasing voices of concern among solicitors over the SRA’s admission last week that it was not sure whether all 116 affected firms had actually stopped practising. One can expect that lenders are equally concerned, although the CML have been quiet on the issue.

COMPLETIONmonitor, the online conveyancing risk management system, has been asked by some law firms to include a reminder to ask opposing solicitors for evidence of their insurance before remitting any money in conveyancing transactions.

It looks as though there will be a potential implications in conveyancing transactions, not least, purchase matters where the Land Registry are raising requisitions that can not be answered by a closed firm. Clearly, those files will be picked up eventually as the SRA appoints firms to take over, but in the meantime there will be a lot of worried clients out there.

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