About CQS Conveyancing

In recent years a number of solicitors have been found guilty of professional misconduct after breaching the six month rule requiring conveyancing solicitors, to report any transactions in which the property being purchased/remortgaged has been owned by the owner or registered proprietor for fewer than six months. The rule, contained in the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook, is primarily designed to combat the potential for vendors to inflate the value of a property and commit fraud. The lenders’ instructions are clear – you must notify the lender under the ‘six month’ rule of that fact (subject to the stated exceptions) Yet lenders and PII underwriters often me that non-compliance with disclosure under the 6 month rule is still all too frequent. The recent case of E.Surv Ltd v Goldsmith Williams Solicitors [2014] EWHC 1104 serves as another reminder that a lawyer must perform the express obligations under the CML Handbook by undertaking a Land Registry search and by reading...

Was your firm - or more importantly were your clients - affected by the technical  issues experienced by  Bank of England yesterday? It is understood that many conveyancing transactions were delayed as a result of system problems with the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) used by solicitors to transfer same-day mortgage payments during the property buying process. The Chaps system processes on average 5,000 conveyancing completions every day meaning that over 10,000 clients may have had their move delayed or put in jeopardy.   Quite aside from the stress to the clients (and individual lawyers) hundreds of COLPs will now be on call to decide if the delay to a client's completion should be considered and recorded as a 'minor breach'. Firms  must  provide services which protect their clients’ interests O(1.2) in a timely manner O(1.5). Each case needs to be decided on its merits. With...

Unanimity across the spectrum of law firm profiles is rare, yet 99% of law firms surveyed agree that The Law Society's view of endorsing only one or two case & practice management software suppliers is counterproductive. The Society's action may well lead firms to question the endorsement of Reliance and the merits of IT projects such as the Conveyancing Portal. An increasing number of firms are asking themselves whether the Society represents their interests  or is seeking to justify its own existence. In a recent survey 236 out of 237 senior representatives of over 200 law firms said they were opposed to the Law Society’s proposal to have one (or a very small number of) preferred supplier/s of case and practice management software. The members of the Legal Software Suppliers Association (LSSA) represent about 80% of the installed law firms market for IT systems in the UK.  They are concerned about a new initiative by the Law Society to engage in a process to choos...

Legal software house Lexsure have announced that in the three months leading up to 1st October over 120 firms upgrade their risk processes by  signing up to Lexsure’s conveyancing risk management products. Simon Seaton, CEO of Lexsure puts the growth down to the recent groundbreaking announcement by  AmTrust Europe Ltd whereby the  ‘A’ rated insurance company declared that for the first time an insurer would link the use of risk mitigation software with lower expenditure on professional indemnity (PI) premiums for law firms. Seaton commented ‘ COMPLETIONmonitor has previously been recognised as a valuable risk mitigation tool but AmTrust took the innovative step to reward firms that reduce their risk profile by using COMPLETIONmonitor in the conveyancing process. The reaction from firms who insure with AmTrust to  the  per case savings on their PI renewals for each case completed with the software has been tremendous. Even for small firms with active conv...