Conveyancing pushed to breaking point by mounting legal risks

Among the forces driving this transformation, Roumanos pointed to the introduction of anti-money laundering (AML) obligations as one of the most significant, with conveyancing lawyers now required to navigate sensitive conversations about clients’ wealth and finances that were once far beyond the scope of their role.

“We are faced with these issues that are beyond what is expected. I’m a lawyer helping people buy property, but all of a sudden I have a requirement to ask them where their money came from and to prove it,” she said.

“All of a sudden, I’m having these very awkward conversations with clients around their wealth, and it’s a very awkward conversation to have with anyone, let alone your client.”

However, she warned that the challenges extend well beyond difficult client conversations, arguing that lawyers are increasingly being forced into impossible ethical dilemmas in which fulfilling one professional duty can place them at risk of breaching another, leaving little room for a clear or safe course of action.

“Then if they say something that leads to a suspicious nature, I have a mandatory obligation to report them, but I can’t tip them off because that’s also not allowed,” she said.

“So we’re faced with these issues where no matter whether we turn left or right, it feels like we can do the wrong thing.”

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Beyond the ethical and regulatory pressures, Roumanos argued that the commercial realities of conveyancing have also failed to keep pace with the profession’s growing complexity, leaving practitioners to shoulder greater time, expertise and risk under a pricing model that has changed little.

“What the worst part is, conveyancing is an area of law where we’re all expected to have this fixed fee,” she said.

“Because lawyers and conveyancers are doing the same work, the fixed fee is not enough. No matter what that fixed fee is, whether it’s 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, the more conveyancing we do, the more we see these complexities.”

She argued that as the gap between the work required and the fees practitioners can realistically charge continues to widen, the disconnect is making the practice area increasingly difficult to sustain and driving much-needed lawyers away from conveyancing altogether.

“If you look at the clock and what you’re charging, it’s generally not enough,” she said.

“This is why so many lawyers leave the area of conveyancing, because of the way in which the billing works and how it is an area where you can do 30 hours of work and get your fixed fee of two grand.”

Roumanos flagged that the cumulative impact of these changes has transformed conveyancing from what was once viewed as a largely administrative function into a sophisticated legal practice requiring practitioners to exercise sound legal judgement across an ever-expanding range of regulatory, technological and commercial risks.

“It’s no longer administrative; it’s no longer filling out a form and ordering a search. We’re now dealing with these really large legal risks – regulatory compliance, technology fraud, AML, really sophisticated clients all of a sudden, and disputes before settlements even occurred,” she said.

“There are so many other things that practitioners are faced with that we’ve never had before.”

Adding another layer of complexity, she highlighted how client expectations have shifted dramatically, with conveyancing lawyers increasingly under pressure to deliver instant answers in a profession where complex legal issues rarely have simple or immediate solutions.

“We live in this world where clients think that they can click their fingers and I can give them advice, and they can click their fingers, and I can solve the problem for them,” she said.