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Take for instance, busy periods at work. How many times have you had this conversation?
“How are things at work?”
“Oh crazy, we’re rushed off our feet at the moment. There’s not enough hours in the day.”
We tend to forget that being busy – unless you are incredibly poor with your time management – is probably a good sign. After all, what’s the alternative? There’s that old saying about when your phone is ringing off the hook: ‘The time to worry is when your phone stops ringing’.
I was reminded of this recently at a recent roundtable we hosted on the conveyancing sector and, in particular, advisers’ involvement in it. Somewhat ironically, I thought, one of the adviser attendees suggested that when it comes to conveyancing, the best cases are those when the phone doesn’t ring because you know that everyone is relatively happy and the case is progressing. The problem cases are the ones when the phone rings every day, sometimes all day.
It cemented in my mind, how pivotal advisers are to the whole home-purchasing/remortgaging process because, more often than not, it is the adviser who takes on the key communication role within a transaction. This is why I believe it’s incredibly important that advisers lead the way when it comes to their client’s conveyancing needs. How awful might it be to hold that pivotal role but not be able to access all the information about how a case is progressing, indeed to have no control over the client, their choice of conveyancer, their ability to get the job done and where there may be potential problems to overcome.
Indeed, one would suspect that even if you’d left your client to their own devices when it comes to their conveyancing firm, then they would still be coming to you regularly to check up on where the case was at.
This type of situation would seem to be brought into sharp focus when it comes to remortgaging and a decision to use the free legals on offer from the lender concerned. Of course we all see the appeal of ‘FREE’ but from most perspectives this choice can often leave the client wondering why they were ‘allowed’ to proceed with such an option.
The fact that the solicitor is only representing the lender not the client is just the start of it, and in a world where many lenders offer cashback in order that the client can pay for their own representation it makes such a choice even more baffling. How often, as an adviser, has your client gone with the free legal option and your phone has effectively been ringing constantly as everyone seeks information on what progress has been made?
Having the client clearly represented by their own conveyancing firm, and having that firm responsible for the case and responsible to that client, seems to make far more sense than allowing the free legals to take over, and the case potentially sitting on someone’s desk as a low priority for months on end. At least with that client/conveyancer contract in place, everyone in the transaction knows who is representing who and which firm has responsibility to move the case to completion?
To my mind, there are enough areas of business for us to be wary of, and for us to whinge about. Ensuring your client is adequately represented and is the top priority for that conveyancing firm, surely ensures there is one less thing to worry about? It will also mean that the adviser has full control and is in possession of all the facts should the phone continue to ring. The irony being of course that, by having chosen such a route, the chances for communication breakdown and the adviser being in constant demand are likely to be much, much less.
