Case Tracking Online - for French Property
By David Anderson
Sykes Anderson LLP, www.sykesanderson.com, is a small City practice which, over the last 5 years, has been steadily growing its French tax and property practice. We offer comprehensive French tax advice which is unregulated in France and which is the major part of our private client practice. We advise UK residents and French residents on tax avoidance using (inter alia) offshore structures. You can see more on these services from our web site by clicking on Service France. From the outset we decided that an office in France was an unnecessary overhead as well as a management headache and everything had to be run from our offices next to the “Gherkin Building” in the City. Use of the internet was from the outset essential.
We use Osprey software for our UK conveyancing. This includes the Osprey “web publisher” facility for allowing clients to see the progress of their conveyancing online. We have been very pleased with this product as well as the support from Pracctice who supply Osprey. Some time ago we saw a need for a more anglicised approach to French conveyancing, which gave English buyers more information than they typically get from a French notaire.
Working with Notaires
Notaires (see www.notaires.fr) are the French lawyers who deal with documents, which must be authenticated by deed, including wills, marriage, contracts and conveyancing. They are distinguished from avocats who deal with advocacy and court work. Notaires are in fact public servants although they run their own local offices in a largely independent manner. They have a monopoly on French conveyancing in that the final transfer deed, the Acte Authentique, will only be accepted by the French Land Registry if lodged by a notaire. An English solicitor can deal with all other aspects.In early 2004, we became the first law firm to put the French conveyancing procedures online, making use of the existing Osprey web publisher facility to offer all clients buying in France login facilities as well as the French estate agents, with the client's permission. This has been successful although the uptake from the French estate agents has been less than the initial uptake we had previously obtained with English conveyancing. This is probably because there is some local resistance in France to centralising French conveyancing especially when it is being managed from London. We are confident this attitude will change over the next few years.
The reaction from the notaires we deal with has been polite bewilderment. The use of the internet to track the progress of transactions does not exist in France so far as I am aware. I think this is connected to the lack of competition since the numbers of notaires is strictly limited and fees are fixed. They are also very backward when it comes to use of the internet with many of their fee earners without direct email addresses. For those who do have email addresses, all emails have to go through the main notaires server. We have seen cases of it taking 6 weeks for the notaires body to allocate an email address to a notaire. As well as the lack of email use, hardly any French notaires have web sites. This may be related to tight non-advertising rules but is probably more a result of the lack of competition. Again the position here will change radically once competition is introduced into the market.
Prospects for Future Work in France
We see considerable medium term potential in using the internet to gain further market share in France. We are, however, held back by the rigid notaires structure, which makes competition difficult at a number of levels. This includes restrictions on access to information over the internet. We cannot for instance obtain the equivalent of office copy entries over the internet as this is reserved to French notaires. We have to obtain them by a postal request. This hinders effective foreign competition. Similarly we have difficulty obtaining the French equivalent of conveyancing counsel's opinion as we cannot instruct direct but have to use a notaire as a post-box. Is there not a level playing field, you may ask? Unfortunately, notaires have an opt out from the usual EU competition rules since they are treated as officials of the French state. This needs to be reviewed by the EU competition authorities.The problem with getting access to the Land Registry over the internet is a very real one. I would be interested to know if other EU countries have the same policy, as this could be something of a "cause celebre" for freedom of information. As UK lawyers we are used to everyone having access to pretty much everything and in many other fields, this is also the French approach. The notaires however seem able to restrict this access in a way which is difficult to justify. This needs to change as it is not in the consumer's interest and also not in our interests!
Insofar as software suppliers are concerned, who might wish to provide case management software to French firms, the tight control exercised by the notaires professional body makes it difficult for non-French competitors to enter the market. In addition notaires work in a fairly formalistic manner, which means that precedent preparation, and acceptance by the notaires is an obstacle to foreign software suppliers entering the market.
We are starting to see a small breakdown in this attitude amongst the notaires we normally work with - perhaps they are infected by our enthusiasm for working with the internet - but there is a long way to go.
David Anderson is head of Private Client at Sykes Anderson LLP,
www.sykesanderson.com, a small boutique firm in the City of London which has
a specialist French property and tax unit. He advises on French tax issues and
is also in charge of marketing Sykes Anderson's services abroad. David is a
Chartered Tax adviser and is also admitted as an attorney in Johannesburg.
Email danderson@sykesanderson.com.
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