In part one of this series, I told the story of selling my house. It took 8 months. The biggest problem wasn’t the legal work itself. It was communication. Nobody knew what was happening, who was waiting on what, or why things had stalled.

That experience was frustrating as a seller. But if you run a conveyancing firm, it should worry you for a different reason: it’s costing you clients.

The reviews tell the story

Go to any conveyancing firm’s Google or ReviewSolicitors page and filter by one and two stars. The complaints are almost never about the legal work. The searches come back, the contracts get drafted, the transfer gets done. The complaints are about communication. Not being kept informed. Having to chase for updates. Feeling like nobody knows what’s going on.

What people remember isn’t the legal outcome. It’s how the process felt. And for most buyers and sellers, it feels like shouting into a void.

The referral problem

Most conveyancing firms rely heavily on estate agent referrals. An agent recommends your firm, the client instructs you, and the transaction begins.

But here’s what happens when the transaction drags. The estate agent starts chasing your firm for updates. They’re calling, emailing, and getting the same vague responses the client is getting. They’re doing your project management for you.

Next time that agent has a client who needs a conveyancer, they’re going to think twice before recommending you. Not because of the legal work. Because you were hard to work with.

The firms that make estate agents’ lives easy get more referrals. The firms that don’t, quietly stop getting calls.

Your fee earners are drowning in admin

Here’s the irony. Your solicitors and conveyancers probably aren’t ignoring clients on purpose. They’re buried.

A typical conveyancer can be handling dozens of active matters at once. Each one involves multiple parties, dozens of documents, and a constant stream of emails asking the same question: “where are we up to?”

Every phone call to give a status update is time not spent progressing a file. The admin overhead of managing communication across dozens of matters eats into the time available to do the actual legal work. Files don’t move as fast as they should, clients feel ignored, and your fee earners burn out.

The gap nobody has filled

Most conveyancing firms are running transactions across email, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets. Some use case management systems, but these are designed for internal file management, not for collaboration between parties.

The buyer’s solicitor can’t see what the seller’s solicitor has done. The estate agent can’t see anything. The client gets updates when someone remembers to send one. The gap isn’t the legal work. It’s the workflow between parties.

This is what DealSync solves. Both sides of a property transaction work in one place. Your firm and the other side’s firm collaborate in the same workspace, with full visibility into document status, approvals, and what’s outstanding.

Estate agents get their own dashboard showing transaction milestones without needing access to the legal documents themselves. Clients can log in too, so they can see where things are up to without picking up the phone. No more chasing your firm for updates. No more relaying second-hand information. And because DealSync is free for estate agents and their clients, there’s no barrier to getting everyone on the same page.

Your fee earners spend less time on the phone and more time progressing files. Your clients leave better reviews. Your estate agents send you more work.

Earlier in this series

In part two, I talked directly to estate agents about the role they’ve been forced into and how proper visibility could transform their referral relationships.

Mark Marley is the founder of DealSync, a deal workflow platform for UK law firms. If you run a conveyancing practice and want to see how it works, book a 15 minute demo.