Conveyancing firm reviews could be a major red herring
There’s no shortage of reviews and ratings of almost every conveyancing or solicitor firm that has completed a case in the past couple of decades.
Go online, and you will find there’s no shortage of reviews and ratings of almost every conveyancing or solicitor firm that has completed a case in the past couple of decades.
In that sense, I suppose some might argue these reviews have become an increasingly influential part of the way both consumers and advisers select legal partners. Whether they come from panel providers, customer review websites or platform-generated scores, they appear to offer a quick and simple way of identifying which firms consistently deliver the best service.
The problem is that conveyancing is rarely that simple.
In fact, I would argue reviews and ratings can sometimes be a major red herring. Not because they have no value, but because they often encourage advisers, in particular, to compare firms that are handling entirely different types of work, under very different circumstances and at very different points in time.
Every transaction is unique
One of the biggest challenges with comparing conveyancing firms is that no two transactions are ever identical. A straightforward freehold purchase involving a first-time buyer with no chain is a very different proposition from a leasehold flat, a new-build property, an auction purchase or a transaction involving Building Safety Act (BSA) requirements, gifted deposits or specialist lending.
Each scenario places different demands on the conveyancer, and naturally leads to different timescales and communication requirements.
Some firms actively specialise in complex work because they have developed the expertise and resources to deal with it. Others deliberately focus on more straightforward transactions because that suits their operating model.
Neither approach is wrong of course, but it does mean comparing headline completion times or customer ratings without understanding the underlying work can be misleading.
If one firm spends much of its time dealing with complicated leasehold matters while another handles predominantly standard freehold purchases, it should surprise nobody that their average turnaround times look very different. The figures alone tell only part of the story.
Service levels change
Another factor that ratings struggle to capture is that service is never static. Every conveyancing firm experiences periods where demand increases or falls away. Recruitment, annual leave, seasonal market conditions and changes in lending activity all influence workloads throughout the year. Even the biggest firms can experience temporary pressure when instruction volumes rise sharply, while quieter periods often allow firms to deliver exceptionally fast turnaround times.
Also, many published ratings are built upon transactions that completed several months earlier. These remain useful as an indication of historical performance, but they cannot accurately reflect what is happening within a business today. Advisers are not choosing a conveyancer for a transaction that completed three months ago. They are choosing one for a client who needs excellent service now.
Quality, not quantity
Communication is understandably one of the most important factors advisers consider when recommending a conveyancer. Clients expect regular updates and advisers want confidence they can answer questions without constantly chasing for progress. However, even communication review scores deserve careful interpretation. Some systems measure communication by recording how often firms manually update portals. While that may appear to be a sensible benchmark, it does not necessarily reflect the quality, accuracy or usefulness of the information being shared.
Increasingly, technology is allowing information to move automatically between case management systems through application programming interface (API) integration. Milestones, progress updates and case notes can all flow directly into platform portals.
In those circumstances, fewer manual updates do not indicate poorer communication. Quite the opposite may be true, because advisers are receiving richer information directly from the conveyancer’s own live system.
The real measure should not be how many times somebody clicks an update button, but whether advisers and their clients receive timely, accurate and meaningful information throughout the transaction.
Reviews always need context
Customer reviews and broker feedback undoubtedly have an important role to play, but they also need to be viewed in context. Buying a home remains one of life’s most stressful experiences. Delays caused by mortgage offers, chains, survey issues or sellers can all influence how clients perceive the conveyancer, even when the legal work itself has been carried out efficiently and professionally.
Broker feedback presents similar challenges. Many advisers understandably do not submit reviews after every completed transaction, meaning ratings can sometimes be based on relatively small numbers of responses. A handful of particularly positive or negative experiences can therefore have a disproportionate impact on a firm’s overall score.
It is also worth remembering that different platforms measure service in different ways. Some rely heavily on broker feedback, others place greater emphasis on customer reviews, while others use internal scoring methodologies based on communication activity or operational data. Each provides a useful perspective, but none offers a complete picture on its own.
Human insight
Technology has transformed conveyancing for the better and should continue to do so.
Better integration, improved data sharing and greater transparency are helping advisers spend less time chasing updates and more time supporting clients.
However, there remains enormous value in speaking to people who work closely with conveyancing firms every day. For example, our experienced account managers understand which firms currently have capacity, where particular strengths lie, which case types suit individual firms and how service levels are evolving in real time.
They often know which teams are particularly effective with complex matters, which firms are handling specialist lending well and where capacity may currently be under pressure. That insight simply cannot be captured by a historic score or a customer rating.
Ultimately, reviews, ratings and performance data should form part of the decision-making process rather than becoming the decision itself. Used in isolation, they can become a major red herring because they remove the context that matters most.
We do not, and should not, have a process or firm or individual reduced to a single number out of 10, and it is one of the reasons why professional judgement remains every bit as valuable in conveyancing as it is in every other area of financial advice.
Harpal Singh is CEO at conveybuddy
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