Let conveyancers regain their humanity
As a solicitor with three years’ post-qualification experience in conveyancing, I have come to realise that the conveyancing field is more administrative in nature rather than an area of law. It has become increasingly difficult to focus on a complex caseload when basics require more attention.
I trace this problem to 2020. The role of HM Land Registry changed dramatically and younger lawyers became more demanding of a work-life balance, which they were not wrong to seek. It was my first hybrid working experience and proved to be positive in many aspects.
When secretaries and junior support staff experience burnout – and they often do – the responsibility shifts back to the solicitor. We are expected to pick up the pieces, maintain the momentum and sustain client care standards without pause. Taking a holiday starts to feel like a guilty luxury and stepping away from emails for even a few hours creates anxiety. Having a day off becomes risky – a risk that no solicitor can afford to take.
This relates to all fee-earners, whether office-based or remote. Even working remotely, the pressure never eased. In fact, juggling work-life balance itself challenged the mental health of many.
Remote conveyancing often means blurred boundaries, where personal time disappears into the same inbox as urgent completions, anti-money laundering checks and lender delays. From drafting legal documents to cross-checking accounts, from appeasing nervous clients to navigating regulatory scrutiny, we are expected to function as machines – fast, flawless and forever responsive.
The pressure to reply instantly, the fear of missing a deadline, the sheer emotional weight of responsibility – this is not sustainable. It chips away at wellbeing in a profession already heavy with risk and accountability.
We need change. We need senior management and regulators to treat burnout not as weakness, but as a warning. Why not normalise grace periods for stamp duty land tax delays, instead of piling pressure on already exhausted fee-earners? Why not treat emails like post – respond in due course, not within minutes?
These subtle shifts could revive something essential in our profession: humanity.
Maybe we conveyancers just need some breathing space, instead of waking up to hundreds of emails at 7am.
Dhriti Unadkat
Embrace Law, London
Don’t penalise firms for unbundling
I write to comment on a recent Gazette article highlighting a Law Society initiative: ‘Plain language definition could boost unbundling’ (27 June).
If a definition of unbundling allows insurers to target firms that practise it to increase their insurance premiums, far from boosting unbundling, it will discourage many firms from engaging in it. Assuming the regulator and/or our trade body see the value to access to justice of unbundling, instead of helping insurers to penalise firms that practise in this area, they should be coming up with ways to protect such firms and their insurers from increased liability that might otherwise flow from the approach.
Why does the Law Society not address the real issue? Are they overly driven, as it often appears to me, by the wishes of larger firms, in this case, to reduce their insurance premiums, at the expense of smaller firms and the access to justice that they offer?
Alexander May
Partner, solicitor advocate, BladeLaw, Gloucester
Anger management
I read Sophie Tang’s article about violence against women and girls (‘A sticking plaster, not a solution: violence against women and the sentencing review’, 12 June).
I feel bound to note the all-pervasive lack of interest in dealing with violence against males which, in terms of total reported incidents, is a much larger problem. I accept absolutely that the perpetrators of violence are also much more likely to be males and that women are much more likely to be victims of domestic violence. And I do not seek to argue that violence against women matters less; rather that there is no acknowledgement that male victims of violence matter at all.
That said, Sophie Tang is correct in that attempting to use the justice system to deal with violence (whether against men or women) is merely a sticking plaster, because it is a societal issue. We need to get to the real root of the problem, which is that there are people who think that violence is an acceptable way to resolve a dispute or that they have never been offered any alternative to violence.
Most people never resort to violence as a problem-solving methodology, whether they are under stress in their relationship or they get into a dispute in a bar.
There is, still, in some groups, an attitude that ‘boys will be boys’ and that getting into a fight is something young men do. Until we can teach men to manage their anger and that settling a dispute with their fists is never acceptable, the problem will persist.
J. Howard Shelley
K.J. Conroy & Co, Birmingham
Trix question
If we are to dispense with the terms ‘testator/trix’ (‘Trix of the trade’, 28 May), the suggested ‘willer’ is dreadful. What’s wrong with ‘will-maker’?
John Lewis
Carmarthen
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