Peter Rodd, senior partner, member of the CQS technical panel and chair of the Property Section, discusses how overheads can be reduced by embracing email.
Having reached the end of our financial year we are in the process of, amongst other things, finalising our budget and business plan for next year. Inevitably the costs of running the practice have increased over the last 12 months. Our biggest expense by far is in respect of staff about which we can do little.
A cold winter has generated larger heating bills than usual and very few of our nominal ledgers show expenditure less than the previous year. Against a difficult trading economic background the result is an overall reduction in profitability. Hopefully the market will improve this year but the possibility of increasing our conveyancing charges seems remote. As a result I am looking for ways in which I can try and reduce the expenses associated with each transaction.
One of the items of expenditure which has increased significantly over the last year has been that associated with postage and document exchange fees. The continued increase together with the volume of paperwork which we have to deliver to clients to comply with our regulatory obligations seems to grow steadily and the cost of delivering that to clients in paper form seem destined to continue to rise.
Wherever possible we now try and communicate with clients by email. Not only does it cost less but it demonstrates to the client that we are doing all that we can to speed up the process.
Having carried out the appropriate due diligence in respect of a firm on the other side of a transaction, we are equally anxious to correspond with them by email and to liaise with estate agents in the same way. The current round of postal strikes makes the use of alternative means of communication all the more essential.
There is nothing in the Law Society's Conveyancing Protocol which specifies the method of communication between the parties solicitors save that it says that where draft documents are submitted by post they should be sent in duplicate. There appears, however, to be a growing gulf between more traditional firms and those, notably the larger conveyancers who more and more utilise electronic forms of communication.
Having myself recently completed a remortgage where the mortgage lender was represented by a such a firm not a single piece of paper passed between us. I received text messages asking me to log on and to respond to queries or to upload documents.
Such a process worked well for me but would not have suited all of my clients, but the saving in expenditure between an essentially electronic transaction and a purely paper based one is becoming ever wider.
There remains, however, a reluctance amongst some firms to contemplate anything other than a paper based process. A refusal to accept contract packages delivered by email unless the sending firm pays the printing and stationery costs of the recipient is in some ways understandable if you find yourself printing off a large volume of paperwork at your own expense on a regular basis.
If on the other hand you carry out as many sales as you do purchases surely it is simply a reversal of the process in that you print the documentation you receive instead of the documentation which you send. The cost of printing and stationery remains the same but you save the cost of postage.
You also save at least a day in terms of delivery and if you are communicating with your own client by email you save the time of scanning in the paperwork which you have received to copy on to the client.
In the commercial property world, the use of email seems to be far more common and I can't remember the last occasion that I received a commercial lease other than by email. An electronic document is much easier to edit and a clean copy for the client's signature can be produced far more easily.
Can there really be any justification in insisting on paper as opposed to the far more environmentally friendly, cost effective electronic alternative? If as residential conveyancing solicitors we want to remain at the forefront of the market isn't it time for us to do all that we can to speed up and improve the process for the benefit of our clients (quite apart from the appreciable savings for ourselves)? As CQS firms shouldn't we be leading the way?