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Apart from the SPA stranglehold, unprofitable fees etc (a) do law schools still teach law? and (b) does anyone on the front line at HMLR know any law, let alone rise requisitions about obviously incorrect applications for registration?

On (a) a second year trainee in another firm asked me why a document was to be a deed and replied to my question whether she had been taught contract, that she had been awarded a 1st class degree.

On (b), in connection with a religious charity's reorganisation into a CIO, I looked at the chapel's title, which had been registered incompetently a senior conveyancer in a mid-sized regional practice, with the result that registered proprietor was the corporate custodian trustee, clearly in place since 1948 plus the managing trustees, who had never held the title since 1948. When I asked this rather forceful and intimidating lady, a partner in mid-sized regional firm, how it happened, she said that she sent all the deeds from the C17 to HMLR and the title came back as HMPR registered (including also the wrong caution and other clerical errors) so it must be alright. HMLR's legal department refused my application for rectification, saying that the latest appointment of trustees put all the trustees together so they were all treated as proprietors. That deed was so incompetently drafted, that no one with a working knowledge of trust and property law could have failed to question it.

I suspect that the only acceptable model for a conveyancing practice is "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap, don't bother with the law but rely on your insurance." I have never suffered a claim since starting my own practice over 20 years ago, and object to paying exorbitant insurance because of these types and spending hours of unbillable time correcting their mistakes - well I'm happy spending time when it benefits a good cause, but as a sole practitioner I am not driven by a billable hours treadmill.