How useful will the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme be to lawyers? Angela Dass reports
It’s a difficult time for residential conveyancers with the low volume of transactions, mortgage fraud, client anxiety and rise of lenders’ claims. Themarket is clearly more competitive and the licensing of Alternative Business Structures (ABS) due on 6 October 2011 has led some commentators to sound the familiar death knell for conveyancers. However, help has come in the form of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) aimed at supporting the profession and helping solicitors retain their key role in the conveyancing process.
The CQS
Before now, the regulatory system had not dealt with the risks to the conveyancing process. The Law Society views this as the fundamental problem and this is a view shared by lenders and insurers and reflected in the increases to indemnity insurance across the profession. So as a response to ABS and to distinguish themselves in the market to consumers, an industry accreditation scheme was developed.
The CQS went live in January 2011, in the form of a “kite mark” to signpost a high
