Room with a view to e-conveyancing deals
A Cheshire solicitor is pushing through his own version of electronic conveyancing by offering fellow practitioners an on-line service to conduct transactions.
Graham Ross of Chester firm Ross & Co, the founder and managing director of The Claim Room, has launched The Conveyancing Room, a tool that creates Web sites in the corporate design of firms and through which all parties to a transaction can communicate on-line.
The filing cabinet contains files for communications with the various parties under pre-defined reading and writing powers, so that clients could, for example, read correspondence from the other side's solicitor but not deal with that solicitor.
Other files may be kept confidential.
There is also an on-line storage area for documents, which can be archived for future reference.
A licence costs 6,000 for a year, including training for one person to open files on the system and support during business hours.
Firms would have to pay an extra 1,000 for every other person they want to be able to open files; no extra licences are needed for fee-earners working on the file once opened.
Mr Ross said that 'when the public knows about this option, they'll want to use it'.
It would also be more convenient for the solicitor, cutting down on requests for updates from clients and producing paper correspondence.
The Claim Room has John Melville Williams QC as its non-executive chairman, well-known IT lawyer Adam Taylor of London firm Adlex as a director, and Professor Avrom Sherr, holder of the Woolf Chair at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, as a consultant.
The Claim Room, an on-line dispute negotiation and resolution tool, was launched by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, last year.
LINKS: www.theconveyancing room.com; www.theclaimroom.com
Neil Rose
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