Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
January/February 2006, by Delia Venables

Do you really need Case Management for Conveyancing?
by Gordon Hewstone

Having read Tim Platel’s article on e-conveyancing in your November/December 2005 Newsletter (or here with full web address) we were somewhat aghast to learn that Solicitors seem to be regarded as unable to conduct a simple conveyancing case without the benefit of a case management system (or at least will be excluded from doing so at some time in the future - something that smacks of restrictive practice to me!).

However, although the article says case management systems are critical and that the Land Registry have assumed we will be using case management, their consultation paper says they propose their own channel access which will be useful for those without sophisticated case management systems. If it is now the case that case management is required when did the Land Registry change their position?

In any event, we have conducted hundreds of conveyancing cases without the benefit of a case management system - and have on occasion laboured under the dead weight of other firm's case management systems, examples of which include:-

  • asking unnecessary questions simply because the system requires it (eg unnecessary enquiries about coal mining and radon gas in Southampton!);

  • getting the reference numbers or other basic details wrong initially and then apparently being unable to change them causing wasted time and effort every time we receive incorrectly referenced post;

  • most case management systems are apparently unable to allow documents and letters to be prepared in advance as the system has not been "told" that a required stage has been reached. This slows the process down as firms are dependant on someone entering information regarding the progress of a case which is nevertheless self-evident to all other parties;

  • in one instance locally a Fee Earner died tragically of cancer and another firm was unable to get their case management system to change her name on their files so all correspondence continued to be addressed to her, causing considerable distress;

  • a certain national conveyancing law firm seems unable to cope with (and no longer handles) leasehold and unregistered land - is this because they have no case management system or personnel that can cope? Case management systems seem to fall down at the first hint of anything out of the ordinary - isn't this where all those years of legal training and qualifications are supposed to come in or are we now approaching the Henry Ford concept of legal work... "we will conduct any legal case you name as long as it fits into our case management system"?

  • it is often easy to spot the firms who have invested in case management systems, not by their speed and efficiency but by their rigid adherence to nonsensical procedures which clearly indicate that no thinking human (Solicitor?) has any meaningful input.

    Any computer-based system is at best only as good as the people operating it. Our conveyancing is always done by a Solicitor - who (and this may come as a bit of a shock to some) can actually remember details about a case without the need of a case management system. We are not dependant on underpaid and overworked clerks inputting data, or on systems which force us along rigid and inflexible flow charts which exclude flexibility, intelligence and common sense or on the whims of monolithic IT companies who want us to bend to their concepts of workflow.

    We always understood that the Land Registry would set up a Matrix system by which the stages of the case could be uploaded so that the other parties could look into this for progress reports etc and we were happy to co-operate with this. My question would be... why does this have to be via a case management system rather than simply a manual upload? The ticking of a few boxes and entering of a few dates online would seem to be all that is actually required - why is it so important to add unnecessary complexity?

    Or is this yet another instance where only the big firms and IT companies were consulted and they acted in their own best interests at the exclusion of the rest of us?

    Gordon L. Hewstone is Practice Manager of Southampton firm access law LLP, www.accesslaw.co.uk.
    email: glh@accesslaw.co.uk.

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