Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
November/December 2005, by Delia Venables

PISCES (Property Information Systems Common Exchange Standard) is an attempt by property professionals to standardise the way they exchange information with one another. PISCES is not software; it is a language that will, once it has been adopted by more firms, lead to better communications among property professionals.

As an example, if a firm’s case management software is PISCES-compliant, they can ‘talk’ to any other PISCES-compliant system without either they or their software suppliers having to make any further changes.

Software that is not compliant will not be able to exchange information with 90% of the lenders and other property professionals that are involved in property transactions in the UK. As an example PISCES member companies who are already committed to the standard include the Halifax, Legal & General, and the Nationwide.

There are often many parties involved in a property transaction and the communications challenges that face everyone are the same: sharing information, and keeping up to date with changes. Without a common standard for data interchange, the challenge is impossible to meet.

With the impending introduction of Home Information Packs (HIPS), the data interaction between the client, mortgagee, solicitor and property professional, is becoming more and more important to the smooth running of a case file. The other common factor among these work providers is that, so far, they use very different formats of communication (information transfer from and to themselves and other property professionals).

LMS, 55live, XIT2, and London & European, have one thing in common: they all provide some form of on-line data facility and/or instructions to firms of solicitors on their panels, and they expect data back from those firms.

This is only the tip of the communications iceberg. There are all the NLIS channels; that is, SearchFlow, Transaction Online and TM search. They all provide web-based services to firms of solicitors, and any case system should be able to use any of the providers interchangeably; because if they don’t, the firm is clearly tied to the provider that their case software integrates to. All the NLIS providers again use different forms of data communications between themselves and solicitors.

This gives all case management software suppliers problems, because each provider needs a bespoke software interface written to deal with that provider. This interface then needs to be maintained and adapted according to that provider’s needs. Inevitably this leads to unnecessary costs that are often passed on to the solicitor using the case management software, in the form of increased costs for support, or to purchase interfaces.

The objective of the PISCES standard (see www.pisces.co.uk for more information) is to allow information to flow among all the parties involved in a property transaction simply and effectively. This should lead to all parties that are involved in any transaction being always up to date, and cut down the replication of data across the different parties.

Say a solicitor is instructed by a bank on a re-mortgage, or a mortgage repossession; the instruction issued by the bank would create a case on the solicitor’s case management system (once it is accepted and has passed conflict checks, of course). The solicitor would benefit from the case ‘appearing’ with all its information on their system. If the solicitor had to correct some of this information, the bank would immediately receive the corrections.

When searches are needed, the property details are passed automatically to an appropriate NLIS provider, which then returns all the searches that are available for that particular property. Choosing the required searches raises internal disbursement requests. The searches are returned electronically and automatically ‘attach’ themselves to the file. All the while agents and clients are being kept abreast of changes and movement in the transaction on the internet through a case-tracking file.

PISCES gives us the tools but using them effectively is the responsibility of the software providers.

I believe that the PISCES standard will in some form be adopted by the vast majority of property professionals over the next 2-3 years, and so it is important that solicitors’ software complies with this standard. PISCES is the only standard that has had input from all property professionals including surveyors, solicitors, estate agents and software companies. It is well positioned to be adopted as the leading, and probably the only, standard in this area.

DPS Software moved PISCES compliance to the top of the agenda and worked hard to achieve it for their case management software. The DPS product ‘One Office’ was passed as PISCES-compliant in late August 2005. It is currently the only PISCES-compliant case management software available.

Osman Ismail is Managing Director of DPS software, www.dpssoftware.co.uk, one of the earliest, and still most successful, providers of case management software for solicitors and particularly conveyancing case management. Email Oismail@dpssoftware.co.uk.

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