Taking lessons

I wonder whether other residential conveyancers who, like myself, do a decent job for a decent fee, find that they are acting more and more as law lecturers rather than lawyers.I am constantly dealing with conveyancing 'factories' where it is patently obvious that the majority of those acting have little or no grasp of conveyancing law or practice.Recently, I was asked to obtain indemnity insurance because my client, a personal representative, could not say whether or not there had ever been a breach of the 'smoke control zone'.

When I asked the conveyancer on the other side whether she knew what a smoke control zone was, she admitted she did not.

When I asked her whether she knew how one could be in breach, she admitted that she did not.

The irony of her having already thanked me for supplying building regulation approvals for the removal of all chimneys and fireplaces, was lost upon her.This is not a particularly unusual situation.

It seems that these conveyancers know the basics but no more.

If something is slightly outside the norm then the majority does not know what to do.

When I mentioned this to one of the high-street chains of estate agents who recommends these 'factories', it responded by saying it was recommended because it was cheap and worked through the night.

I suppose this epithet could be used to describe another older profession, but I suspect that those professionals might have more to teach me than I them.Jeremy Lewis, Alexander Johnson, London