(The Solicitors Journal) A Group of Law Firms providing conveyancing services in the North West have decided to pool their marketing resources under the banner of the North West Solicitors Association in an effort to fend off the threat posed by large Home Information Pack (HIP) providers. But this latest move could also offer traditional high street firms a new model for survival.
At the moment, the new entity only comprises 11 firms in Merseyside but Steve Battarbee, senior partner at Kennan Benjamin Kay, and one of the co-founders, says he is confident that, as the association demonstrates that it provides a service of real benefit to all parties involved in property transactions, other firms will start joining and the group will naturally expand to its eponymous region.
Initially Battarbee wrote to all local property firms about the idea of offering and marketing HIP services jointly, a process which he said took a while to get off the ground because "getting solicitors involved is like herding cats". The list was eventually whittled down to 14, further reduced to 12 after one firm stopped undertaking conveyancing altogether and another decided it was not interested.
"The idea started as a reaction to the threat posted by HIPs where large corporations with massive marketing budgets would be hitting the high street, with the real risk that they would take clients away from conveyancing firms", said Battarbee. "As local firms, it made sense to focus on how we could complete locally but remain independent, hence the idea of joint marketing of a HIP service where, together, we could have the resources to compete with large organisations. It works like a co-operative for the local community which is able to deliver a cheaper and more efficient service."
The principle is remarkably simple: "it operates on a cab rank basis", continued Battarbee. "The Association jointly advertises its own HIP service, the client phones a call centre and is allocated to the next firm on the list – unless they ask for a firm specifically."
One unspoken pre-requisite is that participating firms must trust one another that each can deliver a quality service, as poor service from one could badly reflect on all the others. So far, the mood has been positive and all, from the sole practitioners to the 10 partner firms, say they are confident the service will deliver for all. Aside from the HIP service, firms remain independent and compete with one another. One of the advantage of the new initiative however, is that firms contacted about a HIP have a far better chance to secure a caller's instructions for the whole of the conveyancing process.
"Taking the same attitude with conveyancing (as personal injury work) and continuing to believe that competition merely comes from other law firms, the danger is we could have nothing to compete about".
For users, one of the intended benefits of this new initiative is the reduction of conveyancing transaction times as, in addition to providing a joint HIP service, participating firms have also agreed to using standard contract terms. This is where this new initiative could work miracles for high street conveyancing practices competing against chain-conveyancers and supermarkets.
"If we want to compete with Tesco, we must make the process slicker and more economic, and provide a better service", Battarbee continued. "Conveyancing cannot be just about pricing. Cut price services have been around for some time and serious conveyancers have not been affected."
But equally, Battarbee agreed that there are concerns that if new entrants are let into the market, "the same thing will happen to conveyancing as happened with personal injury work. Firms were too busy looking at themselves and being too insular, and the market has been sold back to non-lawyers for vast sums of money. If we take the same attitude with conveyancing and continue to believe that competition merely comes from other law firms, the danger is that we could have nothing left to compete about".
Using the same contract form is one of the ways in which time and costs could be reduced, resulting in a faster and cheaper service for sellers and buyers. One of the association's sub-committees put forward the proposal all firms should use the same enquiries form and this has now been approved.
"The agreed documentation will speed up the process significantly", said Tracy Thompson, a conveyancer at Morecrofts Solicitors.
"All standard queries have been fed into the form, which means that a vast range of questions can be dealt with right at the beginning with few additional enquiries later, as the solicitors acting for the seller will deal with them at the outset rather than having to deal with them when they are raised later by the buyer's solicitor." While this does not prevent the buyer's solicitor from making further enquiries as they look at each file individually, the idea is that most will have already been addressed.
"The government got it wrong with HIPs", continued Thompson, "it will not speed up the conveyancing process, but this will."
Thompson rejects the idea that "Tesco law" represents a new type of threat – "this is not a great deal different from what volume conveyancers have been doing" - but where the supermarkets and high street banks are household names, which is where they could confidently aim for a slice of the market.
"The general public has the intelligence to see the difference between a supermarket and a local solicitor with the knowledge of the local market", she said.
"This is where, combined with the processes the association is putting in place, we can remain attractive to the public. Some of the firms have been in the area for over 100 years and they have an in-depth knowledge of the property market; they also work with local estate agents and local energy assessors – everything is kept on a local basis, which ensure a far greater knowledge than somebody from outside the area.
"Now, if this works for conveyancing", Battarbee concluded, "there is no reason why we couldn't roll it out for training, Wills, Probate, Personal Injury, and most of the work handled by high street firms".
