Going with the flow

An electronic conveyancing search-handling service has walked away with the Society for Computers and Law's annual award for outstanding application of IT to the law.Searchflow, a licensed service provider of the government-run National Land Information Service, beat three other finalists to receive the award, in its 14th year, from the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith QC, at a ceremony held at the Law Society this week.

The service provides a means of ordering and receiving conveyancing searches from a desktop computer by simply entering the property address and client reference.'We felt Searchflow would make significant inroads into the speed and cost issues that surround e-conveyancing,' said IT consultant Andrew Levison, chairman of the Society for Computers and Law, and part of the judging panel.

'It stood out for the amount of technology it encapsulated, the sheer number of people it could impact, and the potential it has to make the lives of so many lawyers easier.' Mark Riddick, chief executive of Searchflow, said: 'The award is recognition of our solutions to the difficulties faced by e-conveyancing.

Since its conception, Searchflow has been putting in place processes to transform conveyancing from a time-consuming, uncertain and frustrating process into one that is fast and efficient.' The judging panel received more than 30 nominations for the award and whittled it down to a final four.

The three losing finalists were the Elite digital dashboard, Granite & Comfrey's knowledge management and taxonomy system and the IntellX document automation service from Business Integrity.

Andrew Towler