Tackling those CA myths

Firstly, I want to say an incredible well done to everyone for getting through the pressures of the SDLT deadline. It’s been one hell of a last week, and I know you must all be feeling battered and exhausted by now. All I can say is the admiration I have for our profession has grown even more and I hope you are all now having a calmer time.

I wanted to start this month by debunking some myths I come across about the CA. There seems to be a perception out there that the CA is just a bunch of factory conveyancers who peddle tech solutions to further their own gains.

Do we have large conveyancing firms within our legal membership? Yes we do. Do we have affiliate members who are Proptech providers? Well that’s a yes too. But do we also have a large number of medium-sized firms who provide a diversity of views within our membership? Well that’s a definite yes.

In fact, we have recently embraced our first newly established (two years’ running) legal firm to our membership too and we hope that many more medium- to small-sized firms will follow.

So I suppose my myth busting here is, the CA welcomes all firms of all sizes and all points of view, however differing, as our aim is to improve the home buying and selling process for conveyancers and the consumer and that can only be achieved if we have the whole industry on board and we understand the impact right across the field.

So to the other misconception, that the CA is only focused on the future and Proptech.

Do we have sessions at our member meetings and Annual Conference around future developments such as AI? Yes we do. We want our members to be fully informed and be ahead of the game and I don’t see anything wrong in that.

Do our members think tech is the answer to all our conveyancing problems? No they don’t, but most do think tech is a valuable enabler to improving their service and efficiency, and they want to be kept abreast on what products and services are out there. So it is incumbent on us to give them that knowledge and access to the various providers.

On the flip side, do we have sessions on the more business focused day-to-day issues firms face such as pricing, recruitment, regulatory inspections, compliance, insurance claims, customer service to name a few. Well yes we do.

We also provide a range of practical guides such as our Cyberfraud and Fraud Protocol to help our member firms navigate some of the trickier issues conveyancers face.

So my myth busting here is that the CA is here to help with the here and now, alongside the future, so all the various needs of our member firms are catered for.

We also provide a best in class advocacy role where members of all size and views can input into Government policy and receive updates on new legislative requirements. We tackle those day-to-day operational issues on behalf of members with Government departments plus HM Land Registry and other parties such as lenders. We listen to our members and follow up on their concerns to try and make their working life easier and the consumer experience better too.

CA membership is firm-wide, i.e. available to every single person within the firm who wants to engage, and who can benefit from the information we share, the Protocols we publish, the tips and help sheets, and the ongoing regulatory, legal and legislative updates we offer. We save you valuable time and resource so you can concentrate on conveyancing.

If you’re a conveyancing firm and you are curious to learn more about what the CA is all about and what it can offer you, please feel free to attend one of our meetings to see for yourself or drop me a line, I’m more than happy to chat things through.

 

CA’s May meeting – ‘Bring a young professional’

We have our AGM and All-Members’ meetings coming up in London on the 15th May, which is kindly being sponsored by Howden and Dual. We hope you will be able to join us. Registration is available here.

At the CA we know how important it is for our members to nurture and develop the young professionals in their firms, so to help facilitate that, we are opening up the May meeting to the more junior members of your teams. This is a great way for them to get the chance to not only gain industry insights and learning, but to also connect with other professionals in the conveyancing space.

We know the next generation of conveyancers want to engage with their profession and peer group, and we want to be the conduit for that. So if you’re attending the May meeting, I encourage you to bring one or two of your young professionals along, we would love to see as many young conveyancers there as possible.

As I said earlier, these meetings are also open to any conveyancing firms who are interested in joining the CA, so members, if you are aware of any businesses who have expressed an interest in joining, or you are reading this and would like to see what the CA can provide for you, then please contact the Secretariat to see how we can facilitate attendance. You can contact them at: secretariat@conveyancingassociation.org.uk

These events are not just about the content, the presentations, the sessions we offer on the day, but a lot about the networking opportunity they provide. Members often feedback how attending a CA meeting meant they got to speak to a peer who opened their eyes to a new way of working, or resulted in a new business relationship being formed, or indeed friendships that have lasted many years.

I look forward to seeing you all in May.

Nicky Heathcote is Non-Executive Chair at the Conveyancing Association (CA)