Convey Law in the ‘Top Ten’ in the Land Registry List of Largest UK Conveyancing Companies

The Land Registry figures for 2010 show that Convey Law was one of the largest privately owned providers of transactional conveyancing services throughout the course of last year.

Throughout the course of 2010 we completed just under 5000 residential conveyancing transactions (sale and purchase transactions). Upon scrutinising the Land Registry figures for last year it became apparent that Convey Law was one of the largest privately owned conveyancing practices in the UK, ranking just behind the big corporates that make up the Countrywide Property Lawyer Centres in Manchester and Cardiff and My Home Move in Leicester.

There were a total of 721,089 applications across 8,795 legal practices in 2010, giving the top ten conveyancing practices a 5.6% market share.

Of all the legal practices making applications listed in the Land Registry figures, over 800 of those legal practices only completed one transaction. Will those legal practices still be undertaking conveyancing work at the end of this year?

Mortgage lenders continued to diminish the number of legal practices that they were prepared to act on their behalf last year.  It is likely that this process will continue this year as mortgage lenders look to limit the risk of using small legal practices.

The Solicitors Regulatory Authority are considering legislation to assist solicitors in obtaining indemnity insurance without the ability to undertake conveyancing work. Conveyancing is regarded as high risk by the indemnity insurance industry and hence conveyancing solicitors will need to obtain separate insurance for their property work.

We may therefore see a substantial reduction in the number of solicitors practices able to undertake conveyancing work over the course of the next 12 – 24 months.

March 1, 2011