COMMON DATA STANDARD: City lawyers progress scheme to reduce transaction times and cut down on errors

The legal working group aiming to create a common data standard for exchange of property information has reached a landmark in its development by producing an extended working draft - as it emerged that the finished application may also be adopted globally.

The draft of the Property Information Systems Common Exchange Standard (PISCES) - the result of 18 months' voluntary work by property solicitors and other players in the industry - incorporates the processes involved in property lease or investment, and will be extended again later in the year to cover residential transactions.

PISCES is an XML-based set of definitions and rules that facilitates the automatic exchange of information between various software applications.

For example, it means that data can be automatically transferred from a PISCES-compliant Web page into a Word document without re-keying the text.

This reduces the time taken to process a property transaction and removes the potential for human error.

PISCES will also be able to produce automatic summaries of documents.

The service is devised to be commercially neutral and will be offered to users via the PISCES Web site.

City law firms involved in the working group are: Berwin Leighton Paisner, Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Lovells, SJ Berwin, CMS Cameron McKenna, together with Birmingham's Wragge & Co.

Meanwhile, solicitors from Southport firm Barnetts, Somerset-based Battens and the Stokes Partnership, Newcastle's Dickinson Dees, Cardiff firm Hugh James and Yorkshire-based Hammonds Direct have joined a parallel group which is looking into how PISCES could be used in residential transactions.

Scottish firm Dundas & Wilson is a member of both groups.

At a meeting of working group members and other industry professionals last week, hosted by Berwin Leighton Paisner, it emerged that some 100 organisations in the US have expressed an interest in PISCES, along with players in the property sector in Australia and south-east Asia.

PISCES chairman Mark Riddick said that as the scheme has received clear interest from the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister as well as other policy makers, it was vital that property solicitors increase their involvement at an early stage by joining their peers on the working groups and talking to IT providers.

'For people to be able to harness this, it is essential that application providers make their software PISCES compliant,' he said.

'The industry as a whole needs to get behind this.'

Steve Kelway, general counsel to the Land Registry's e-conveyancing taskforce, said solicitors have played a vital role so far in setting up the scheme.

'We are keen to make sure that we don't develop this out of central government,' he added.

'We want to see it developed by the people who are going to use it, by the property profession as a whole.'

Janet Day, legal IT director at Berwin Leighton Paisner, predicted that the proposed extension to PISCES would benefit all commercial property lawyers.

'As application providers incorporate PISCES compliance into their software the industry will change, enabling e-conveyancing as well as more efficient processes generally and a more attractive service to their customers,' she added.

Paula Rohan