Sole legal firms suffering in downturn

OpenConvey, the online conveyancing referral portal, is warning that the action of the Co-operative Financial Services (CFS), owner of the Britannia Building Society, which followed through its threat on October 5th and axed 3,600 sole practitioners from its panel, could be the first of many lenders to follow suit, which will have an impact on intermediaries and their clients.

OpenConvey believes that lenders will see the action of the Co-op as an opportunity to follow suit and intermediaries will have to look elsewhere for the personal service they have received from the sole practitioners they have recommended to clients.

Steve Maine, managing director of OpenConvey, said: “The Co-op’s action could well be just the opening salvo by lenders against sole practitioners on their panels. The impact on intermediaries and their clients, who have benefited from the great service they receive from sole practitioners with whom they may have worked for years, could be severe. To maintain the relationship could mean that clients have to pay the lender’s solicitor as well which is not in their interests.

"There is a sea change taking place here. Understandably, lenders are concerned about fraud and tightening up their procedures but sole practitioners are being picked on as a result. Intermediaries will need to look for solicitor practices which can offer the same type of personal service, probably based in their region or locally, but with access to online systems which many sole practitioners might not have but which can lead to a faster service as well.”

David Sledge, Partner at Property Law Partners, based in Woking, one of the practices benefitting from OpenConvey’s online referral system, said: “We are welcoming enquiries from more intermediaries through OpenConvey who want a similar or better service for their clients’ conveyancing as they were receiving from their sole practitioner contacts. Legal partnerships like ours are what make the OpenConvey proposition so beneficial for intermediaries, where personal service and access to the partners, up to the minute communication and modern administration, make conveyancing run smoothly.”