Call for conveyancers to diversify as pressure grows on fees
Conveyancers are facing unprecedented pressure over fees but have largely failed to diversify into other areas, according to research seen exclusively by the Gazette.
The news comes as Spicerhaart, the estate agency which has launched website iSold.com in association with supermarket Tesco, said that it expects the site to become ‘a major force in the distribution of conveyancing and associated legal services’ and would ‘certainly consider’ applying for a formal licence to offer legal services in 2011.
The survey of 117 law firms by search company MDA SearchFlow found that 62% said they were now under more price pressure from clients compared with a year ago. More than a third said their business had been ‘significantly’ affected by the recession, and another 38% said it had been ‘somewhat’ affected. Respondents said they faced growing competition from online conveyancers and panels.
Despite this, 60% of firms had taken no steps to diversify into other areas in the past year. Those that had done so had mostly gone into probate and litigation.
Law Society property spokesman Paul Marsh said he had ‘never known such pressure on fees’ and firms needed to make ‘hard choices’ if they wanted to stay profitable and competitive.
David Kempster, marketing manager at MDA SearchFlow, said: ‘This is the first time we’ve seen high-street firms facing such pressure on price, and is combined with the impact of the recession and reduced sales.’
However, he said conveyancing firms were still insufficiently aware of the potential threat posed by big brands entering the market.
‘What’s come out of this is that it’ll take something significant to change the way solicitors operate,’ he said. ‘Estate agents are fretting about Tesco and Google entering the property selling market, but this does not seem to have transferred to the solicitors’ profession yet.’
Spicerhaart launched online estate agency iSold.com in conjunction with Tesco last week, and will market the service through the tesco.com website. Lucian Pollington, iSold.com director, told the Gazette it would ‘certainly consider’ applying for a formal licence to offer legal services in 2011.
He added: ‘As a pioneering estate agency business, iSold expects to become a major force in the distribution of conveyancing and associated legal services.’
Pollington said iSold.com is working closely with a small number of key partner law firms.
Marsh added: ‘If Tesco decides to offer conveyancing, it will be a watershed for the profession and will make a huge impact on the market.’
Comments
Let Them Eat Cake
What exactly are conveyancing firms to diversify into? Unprofitable Legal Aid, which is now exclusivley contracted anyway? Litigation, which is increasingly being avoided by all but the richest? Minor commercial work, which is fiendishly complex and poorly rewarded? These are not money spinners in any way and completely alien to the average conveyancer.
They cannot do things that other businesses do, by way of diversification, for fear of upsetting the SRA. Look at the solicitor football agent fined under our "Anti-Soviet Activity" catch all law "Bringing the Profession into Disrepute".
The Legal Services Act 2007 is simply going to destroy the High Street part of this profession, starting with the conveyancers.
This has been coming for years and Mr Marsh fails to say how such pressures are to be overcome because he is unable to do so. The hard choices he refers to are the choices for a dying profession. Tesco are already limbering up to deliver the coup de grace, as are Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. Conveyancers are going to be particularly hard hit because the run off insurance fees for closing there businesses will be enormous.
No one takes the slightest bit of notice of a once great profession. The MOJ even decides that Criminal Defence Solicitors will be paid late, in an election year and nothing is said or done in the newspapers. We are now treated worse than every other profession and subject to the same treatment as civil servants in corrupt African states.
What is the best brand, The Law Society, going to do about all this I wonder? I would expect headlines in all the newspapers about this scandal but as usual there is nothing. Not a whimper, outside our trade mag.
Is the Law Society still hoping that New Labour will save you from the awful Tories. That would be the same New Labour who have just destroyed your profession.
Will the last person who leaves the profession turn the light out.
Conveyancing Solutions for Law Firms
1 Never compete on price. Always add value.
2 Work with Estate Agents to get referrals.
3 Get your website found first by people wanting to get conveyancing.
4 Work with other partners who can refer work to you.
5 Answer the question "Why Should You Do My Conveyancing" with a powerful, proven Unique Selling Point.
6 Do 20 things and expect 20 new clients a month.
7 Make a commitment to the above.
8 Find someone who can help you do this if you
don't know how.
Conveyancers need not worry
Nonsense.
All Teso offer is 'every little..'. House buyers and sellers expect much more. If you trust your assets and livihood to a Supermarket good luck. Would you, and the 20 people you plan to tell not to, and their 20 people. Start the warnings now.
Put at the end of your property Reports to come back to your firm as you can advise how to select a good estate agent. Use your influence now.
For decades there has always been a claim to a challenge, but nothing has panned out.
No big player will make any real impact changing res prop going to high street lawyers.They may threaten estate agents, but again, I doubt it. Selling with Tesco now is a joke of an option, and if that is how they make their new big splash, we need not fear.
So many agents say that the majority of their clients already come equipped with a local solicitor of their choosing. Through repeat working relationships, or recomemmndation from a friend or family member. That will remain us, or you or another law firm.
We will not be threatened from a revamped 'checkout Charlie' having any influence to direct sellers to Tesco's own lawyers. Tesco will be online, so selling a legal service to a Buyer (who already has to be inclined to accept a supermarket's advice on a lawyer which Agents find hard to dissuade) is going to be hard going - even if Tesco improve what they are currently doing now to any serious degree.....as a challenger to Rightmove...really..
Then again Tesco will use high street firms, so you might think work will stay with us, but they will go the factory or panel route, and we all know how good those firms are, so they will soon get a reputation, just like the usual factory firm suspects we can all name
People like bricks and mortar, not a call centre. Unless Tesco start buying legal firms......
Law Society where is your support for the profession?....zzzzzzzzzzzz
A lack of vision
I am a legal professional and I own a no referral fee website at www.compareconveyancing.com. I am constantly surprised at how unwilling firms are to get out there and market themselves. We go so far as to offer 3 months on the site entirely free to allow firms to see the benefits of directly marketing themselves and we charge a very nominal fee thereafter. Some firms get the concept immediately but I'm afraid that there are a lot of dinosaurs out there who are in for one heck of a shock unless they pull their fingers out.
Conveyancing Solutions for Law Firms
oh and Boyd Butler ...spot on!
Conveyancing firms need to think like TESCO to compete with it.
If it is tough now, what will happen when the conveyancing market opens up in 2011 with the likes of TESCO providing conveyancing? Times are likely to get tougher and tougher and inevitably many high street conveyancing firms are likely to close shop.
This is capitalism in motion. Many high street conveyancing firms have poor client care, slow service, poor communications, poor quality, poor IT systems, infrastructure, communications, operations and invest almost nothing in training. Now their predicament is worsened because the high street firms charge almost two or three times that of panels and online conveyancers with almost no marketing. Thus the natural knock-on effect of this, in a capitalistic market, is for these high street law firms to lose clients to better, faster and unfortunately bigger companies that are able to satisfy the demands of modern day clients.
Charging a fee that is two or three times more expensive than another company would not be a problem if these high street firms can develop their firms to think like businesses and find unique selling points that would make clients want to pay that extra amount; after all how does Rolls Royce compete with Ford. http://conveyancingadvisory.wordpress.com/
A lack of vision......herm
Such a website is not the solution. Avoid avoid avoid.
Comparing your legal fees, or 'slashing the professions throat even further on price' should I say ...has gone on long enough.
Such a website does nothing but promote price competition, and makes the poster some money. if the Law Society though tit was an idea, they'd have it on their website.
Thankfully many law firms are avoiding this sort of 'advertising', as it is not the way forward, and instead are revamping their website, making internal changes to get the right staff, focusing on attention to deal (god knows many firms fail at the moment), imcreasing promptness, embracing of IT.
E.g, how many readers have a firm where:
- you close at lunchtime
- you close dead on 5
- you have no email or direct dials on your letters
- you require people to 'press 1 for monkey 1 and press 2 for monkey 2'
- you find estate Agents a pain rather than thinking 'hey, they are after the same thing as us, let's work together'
Service service service.
If the estate Agents think wow, you can forge a great relationship and thrive together. Your fee is not as important then, as you are giving the best value for £ in the area.
If you want to compete on price, then your firm is doomed!
Comparing conveyancing fees
Every client wants to compare conveyancing fees and want to get the best deal available. The problem with comparison sites is that the comparison is not based on quality, speed, experience, skills, feedback from other clients. Instead the comparison is purely on price and this gives the client the wrong picture. However there are sites out there that do give a good comparison service.
What is the best brand, The
What is the best brand, The Law Society, going to do about all this I wonder?
Ha ha ha ha ha 'the best brand' laugh? I needed a change of underwear....
Tesco law and Estate Agency
Consumers will generally opt for the cheapest prices providing they are happy with the product or service. There is a danger that consumers may be mislead by glossy marketing into believing that they will be getting something better from Tesco Law and Tesco Estate Agency albeit at a fraction of the cost normally paid.
Tescos are unlikely to attract the brightest and the best negotiators and conveyancers. Spicer Haart may be a good estate agent now but what will it be like after they seal the deal with Tesco and could Tesco dump them at a later date if targets are not met in the way Tesco want it - who knows? Tesco and the like are clearly the organ grinders which is the fundamental flaw with the principle of ABSs and I am astounded that what is clearly obvious has not been picked up by those who first considered the principle of ABSs. Head of Legal practice......please spare us the ball ! I am sure he or she will be carefully selected and well rewarded at the right time, perhaps just before he or she signs his kids up to school fees at top public schools. I hope such a person is robust enough to stand up to the Sir Alan Sugar type when it comes to the bottom line and smart enough to deal with someone who is as softly spoken and deadly as David Sullivan (Co-owner of West Ham FC). Lambs to the slaughter.
A top sales negotiator can make a vendor thousands of pounds by achieving a good price for a property through excellent salesmanship and a top conveyancer can get difficult leasehold transactions through more efficiently than a factory team operation - ask any estate agent.
Most transactions these days seem to be leasehold property where there are plenty of potential negligence claims to avoid. Only high calibre individuals can do the job properly. Does Tesco know that the area of the highest claims for professional negligence in the law is in the field of conveyancing? It does not seem unreasonable to assume that there is a link between the low fees in conveyancing (which are made even worse by referral fees) and mistakes being made to achieve the bottom line.
The call for conveyancers to diversify really misses the point..
If Tesco Estate Agents goes down the route of putting estate agents in retail uniforms (as the Halifax did before their estate agent arm was closed) then the low calibre negotiators such an operation is likely to attrach may mean that the consumer is better off selling his/her property through a traditional independent estate agent to get a high sale price whilst at the same time buying one through Tesco at a cheap price. Unfortunately a traditional estate agent is likely to recommend a good conveyancer who will have to deal with the factory operation at the other end and in some cases will have to police the transaction to its conclusion for no extra pay.
Markets thrive on competition. Monopoly capitalism is a a kind of communism.
Tesco is a great food retailer and it is the supermarket of my choice but it should stick to what it knows and leave professional legal services alone.
Tesco Law
These are very good points but there must be a huge number of unemployed estate agents in the current market who will be willing to wear uniform, in exchange for a good job. Some of them good negotiators. There will be a massive turnover of such staff, once they realise they face absolutely no quarter from Tesco management. Disciplinary hearings for being ill and such like activities will soon wear these people down but there will be a huge pool of unemployed solicitors and law graduates to pick up the slack, thanks to the Legal Services Act 2007. Tesco knows how to deal with vast staff turnover and they will have a huge labour pool from those graduates whose professional jobs have been destroyed by New Labour and their obsession with so-called competition.
As for Alan Sugar or David Sullivan figures, the answer to your question is simple. New Labour planted stooges in the Law Society, in order to force the Legal Services Act 2007 through. The Council of the Law Society were repeatedly told by these people that the Clementi changes were the only way forward, when it was clear what would happen to the high street. The City of London was to be bought off by the right to raise external funding and so they didn’t complain. Those who rebelled against Clementi were actively undermined. The coup de grace was a personal visit by Lord Falconer, to demand that the Law Society Council vote for Clementi and transfer all regulatory powers to the SRA board. Most Law Society Council members voted for this and that was the end of independence. All was cleared for the reign of the rapacious tycoon.
Any solicitor stupid enough to sign up for an ABS run by a rapacious tycoon had better be prepared to be hung out to dry if things go wrong and they will go wrong in a big way. The SRA will have you if you follow the bosses orders and the boss will sack you if you don’t. You need to be very careful who you sign up with. I suggest Sir Richard Branson, for what its worth. He is a good employer and will understand your concerns. Other will not.
I am one of those unemployed solicitors...
... and I would be happy to work for Tesco, or anyone else who would offer me a job for that matter. Having been unemployed since October after being made redundant for the second time in six months any prospect of employment is welcomed, it would provide a very welcome opportunity to use my skills which really are worthless outside the legal field as one is labelled a potential trouble causer or simply over-qualified, whatever that means. I understand the threat it poses to high street firms but given the experience I have had over the last 12 months I feel no loyalty to high street firms, they are not prepared to change and this is usually at the cost of their employees, not the partners. I would have no hesitation in jumping the sinking ship and joining Tesco and I am sure I am not the only one.
and you are one of the people
and you are one of the people who help grind conveyancing standards and price into the ground by working for the enemy and making do....wether you need the job or not
Needs Must
Man must eat and these poor souls have lost their raison d'etre. They are going to find work anywhere they can get it. This will happen until this profession learns to look after its own, instead of constantly sniping at other solicitors.
Diversity
One way conveyancers can fight back is to launch their own estate agency, offer fixed price selling, offer listing on rightmove and other portals tied in to conveyancing, employ the services of energy assessors to do your epc's, hips, property particulars and beat the big boys at their own game.......simples!.
as an energy assessor/come marketing consultant myself, i'm in the process of offering private sellers fixed price selling and i have a deal with a local solicitor for the legals. my websites is still under construction, but this could be the way forward for solicitors wanting to diversify.
Estate Agency
This has been done by many solicitors and they are still struggling. You do not seem to appreciate that solicitors have huge overheads which cannot simply be reduced by rolling out a website and running up a very clever ad idea based on, for example, Meerkats
doing that will totally deny
doing that will totally deny you any referrals and the local agents will bad mouth you and your firm. be careful doing that. in an area with no competition from agents then maybe. but you assume your agency will be a success when other agencies are folding
Owner Occupiers
There was a very interesting statistic produce recently. For the first time in fifty years the proprtion of owner occupiers in the housing market is decreasing. People are being priced out of the market. Supply of mortgages and available property is decreasing. There are more tenants than before. We are just out of the worst recession for 80 years and there does not seem to be a fall in house prices. This is because of chronic unsdersupply.
This may be the end of the owner occupier obsession, which has fuelled cheap conveyancing for the last 20 years.
Ironically, this change could be the saving of a number of high street firms, as the trend is likely to mean that factories cease to exist, as volume conveyancing tails off. However, it will still be goodbye to most high street firms.
Conveyancing
I do not know why Conveyancing Firms don't think about specialising in Conveyancing! Get their own houses in order and stop worrying about what others are doing.
I have now been out of work for eighteen months. I have a quarter of a century's experience and knowledge currently being wasted. The conveyancing profession is not that well off that people of my calibre can be allowed to go to waste, yet here I am on the sidelines.
Come 2011 such an oversight is likely to be Tesco's gain, as I am sure there are other people in a similar position to myself. If I have to I will gladly go to work for Tescos, and that will be to the detriment of those conveyancers currently complaining now, but no doubt struggling on without good experienced successful conveyancers on their books because they are taking a cheap option.
again, you will work for the
again, you will work for the enemy and help to bring conveyancing standards down and price. WE cut our own throats when we moved from %, now you want to cut it again.
Recherche du temps perdu
Fine sentiments but it would have been better if you and many other solicitors had spoken up when the Legal Services Act 2007 was a bill but then there was silence or virtual silence. Instead, you want to demonise those driven to desperation by the policies arising from your silence. This sums up the fractured nature of this profession and goes a long way to explaining why we have the huge problems that we face.
you are going back there you
you are going back there you mean!
Musee des Beaux Arts
Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" is much more appropriate to the Law Society's relationship with solicitors and, indeed, the relationship between solicitors in trouble and those who are not in trouble. It is still in copyright and so can't be reproduced here but google it.