The conveyancing timebombs are slowly exploding all around. 3 suspensions for touting, and another large sum of money missing from client's account. Things are going very wrong in the land of the conveyancers, even though property transactions are at an all time high..

I have expressed my views on touting in earlier posts. In short, while I think that the touting rules are antiquated; as long as they are still on the books, as lawyers, we have to play by the rules, and those that flaunt the rules will need to pay the price.

As for Sadique Marican and ZM Amin, the firm was notorious for being incredibly overstretched. With the amount of late interests and compensations for mistakes the firm was paying off, it is forseeable that te 6M may have been used for mistake cover ups and compensation payments rather than pure personal enrichment.

Growing too fast, over reliance on conveyancing staff to carry out the work with inadequate supervision, poor business planning, no systems for the other partners to monitor the accounts or calendar dates, that scenario is unfortunately, all too familiar in many "successful" conveyancing firms.

I draw on my experiencers as an ex-conveyancer and legal technologist to venture forth the following suggestions:

1. With today's property boom, the magic in conveyancing is not in being able to get the work but the ability to deliver it.

2. The firms in the Hub that produce consistently good work and keep up their standards have some key things in common:

a. Good staff morale and teamwork and staff empowerment programs;
b. Automation of document production;
c. Partners that are experienced conveyancers and who could if push came to shove, would be quite capable of rolling up their sleeves and handling a whole file on their own (perhaps minus the Stars E-Lodgment bits)
d. A operations manager that focuses and enforces workflow and systems.

All common sense. How you get there is where the trade secret lies. The backroom is all important. Get that running as smoothly as the perculator in the waiting lounge, and you have a good chance of not being one of the exploding bombs.

I hope that the recent incidents will galvanize the conveyancing community to take a long hard look at all that is wrong, and to work together to put dignity and pride back into the profession.

Let's stop the disgraceful entrapment and the bad blood; let's review the rules; and let's invest in the backrooms and proper staff empowerment.

Serena Lim
Bizibody Technology