Solicitors in England and Wales will be forced to publish their fees for conveyancing on their websites from next month, in a move to help home movers shop around and cut costs.
It typically costs about £1,000 in legal fees to sell the average home, and around £1,200 when buying, with stamp duty on top, so the total comes in at about £2,200.
But, until now, the 1 million homeowners who move in an average year have had little chance to compare the prices of legal services. First-time buyers are often pushed through to solicitors linked to estate agents and mortgage lenders – who may earn referral fees – or have to ring round local law firms recommended by friends to try to find quotes.
New transparency rules introduced by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which come into force on 6 December, should eventually lead to Moneysupermarket-style comparison services where you can obtain an online quote, with Airbnb-style reviews to help check on the quality of a solicitor’s work.
Conveyancing is not the only legal service to come under the new rules. If you need a solicitor for uncontested probate cases – motoring offences, immigration, employment tribunals, debt recovery and licensing applications – solicitors will be expected to have their fees posted on their sites from December before you buy.
Andrew Lloyd of Search Acumen, which runs technology services for conveyancers, says: “The bare minimum you’ll see is a list of hourly rates plus typical timescales and additional costs and fees.
“Best practice will be an online calculator where you can put in your address and get a fairly final estimate of the amount you’ll have to pay.”
Lloyd reckons the new rules will increase consolidation among conveyancers, with lots of small legal firms quitting the market as price competition bites. The number of legal firms offering conveyancing has already dropped by 700 to 4,100 over the past five years, and this trend is now likely to accelerate.
But some solicitors argue that the transparency rules will provoke a “race to the bottom”, with quality suffering as firms cut costs.
On the Law Society Gazette’s website, there is fury among solicitors over the new rules and the timescale the SRA has imposed.
“How sad it is when the backbone of the profession, solicitors who have, in some cases, served their local communities with distinction over decades, are planning premature retirement because of a toxic cocktail of overzealous, heavy-handed regulation and weak leadership,” says one.
“Price transparency. Fantastic. The fact that I can tell potential ‘customers’ that their work will typically cost between £200 to £50,000 and can be conducted by either a trainee or a 25-year PQE solicitor is really beneficial?” says another, while one quipped: “Buy a divorce and get 50% off a new will! Short time only – offer must end Monday *Excludes NI. T&C’s apply. Offer limited to one per client. Some divorces may vary. Your beneficiaries may go up as well as down.”
The Law Society, during its consultation over the new rules, warned that “one size fits all” pricing did not suit legal services.
It says: “Legal issues can be extremely complex, so publishing a raft of information without proper context – as the regulator is proposing – may confuse rather than aid consumers.
“There is no ‘one size fits all’ – these are complex issues that need careful unpicking. In this instance, the regulatory approach is inflexible and risks driving competition on price alone, rather than on other important considerations such as quality or protections.”
