“It’s been sold before, so it’ll sell again”

No-one ever said that working in property law is a walk in the park. Unless that park is the Peak District and you’re struggling up the 28% incline of Winnats Pass. In which case, that’s a pretty fair comparison.

However, things are about to get a whole lot more difficult, and there’s precious little we can do or say to stop it. Much like riding the famous waves at Nazare in Portugal, lawyers have little choice but to strap on a life-jacket and dive in.

This is because, like everything else in 2025, new technology is about to bring seismic changes to conveyancing and the impact is going far beyond most people’s imagination. The drumbeat of change is no longer over the next hill, but instead, like those warnings you see on car wing-mirrors, is much closer than it might appear.

What are we NOT talking about

Firstly, let’s clear up what technology we’re talking about, because it’s easy to be side-tracked by electronic onboarding, signatures and online forms. Sure, electronic signatures are convenient and if clients want to complete their TA10 on their laptop, then who are we to criticise them. If the sun was shining, we might even share their identification documents with other people in the process. Which would save a few days.

But these tiny increments don’t change the way that lawyers carry out due diligence and have been doing the same way for decades, albeit substituting letters for emails. The problem is the inexorable rise of the volumes of data and potential issues, so it’s no wonder transactions are slower now.

The rise of artificial intelligence

Many people are today, whether they know it or not, using artificial intelligence in their daily lives to help them become more expert with challenges that previously they might have found a bit tricky.  Like creating management reports that are actually readable, writing presentations that don’t cause their audience to fall asleep from boredom or producing delicious meals from a cucumber, 500g of Cheddar and half a shrivelled Chorizo they found at the bottom of the fridge.

Oh, and yes, conveyancing.

We are now seeing clients taking the documents we produce, and instead of asking us to summarise our Report on Title that we lovingly created for them, they are throwing caution to the wind and exposing all their personal information to the public scrutiny of ChatGPT. Then they are asking a LOT of questions about leases, management packs and “do we REALLY need a Deed of Variation”?

When combined with the noticeable breakdown in trust in our post-pandemic world, this can only mean one thing. As lawyers we will be faced with a better informed and more expert public who will demand more accountability from us.

We’ll look back on those halcyon days when clients would Google questions for us, with fond naivety.

So what can we do?

Given the inexorable rise in informed opinion from clients, lawyers are faced with a choice that would have caused Thomas Hobson, (who gave rise to the phrase, “Hobsons Choice”) sleepless nights.  Lawyers will be forced to use technology to give them a much higher degree of protection than they had ever needed in the past.

As an example, it used to be the case that if a property had been sold several times, it would probably experience fewer legal issues, as such matters would have been addressed in the past. However, with the rise of technology that is conceivably able to perform more technically complete accurate work than lawyers, as it can take into account much more information, problems that may have previously been missed, will become more likely to be discovered.

With this breaking of the “monopoly of knowledge” lawyers will have to rely on technology to interpret documents better than them and be prepared to act more as adjudicators and decision-makers on whether issues are worth raising and what are not.

The genie is out of the bottle

Some will suggest that technology is best left to the less experienced lawyers, whilst those with more experience will continue to follow their traditional path.

This will be missing the point – we need experienced lawyers more than ever to mentor and teach their more junior colleagues, and give informed opinion to clients, lenders and indeed, other lawyers.

Artificial intelligence is making expert opinion on complex issues such as conveyancing much more widely available, and lawyers have no choice but to embrace and adapt these technologies today, because those distant five-year horizons of change that are so often quoted, may be hopelessly optimistic.

Peter Ambrose is the CEO of The Partnership and Legalito – specialists in the delivery of transparent and ultra-efficient conveyancing software and services.

Peter Ambrose: pambrose@thepartnershiplimited.com, 01483 579978

Press enquiries: Tracy Holland, tholland@thepartnershiplimited.com 01483 579978