Letters roundup: 20 October

We need a cultural shift on divorce

I read Jo O’Sullivan’s article (‘Why we need a two-track family profession’, Gazette, 29 September) with great interest; however I fear sometimes we may be chasing an impossible dream.

What is needed is a cultural shift within society as to how divorce should be approached. All too often the knee-jerk reaction is to ‘lawyer up’ (no doubt fuelled by how divorce is portrayed in the media). It takes a brave practitioner (often weighed down by financial targets) to de-escalate matters, instil some realism in their client and resist the temptation of rushing to court at the outset.

Mediation, collaborative practice and early neutral evaluation need to be better promoted and supported by the government.

Resolution (the solicitors’ family law association) should also reinstate the requirement for new members to undertake the Code in Practice course and toughen up on policing it. The tone of communication between practitioners has sadly coarsened of late and Resolution needs to get wise to this.  

Hopefully these measures would go some way to avoid the schism in the profession being proposed by Ms O’Sullivan.

Rob Parker

Head of family, Lamb Brooks, Basingstoke

Put ‘legal’ back into property transactions

Eduardo Reyes’ ‘Spotlight on conveyancing’ article (see Gazette, 6 October) ticked all the boxes for me as a director of a firm undertaking conveyancing, private client and family:

• Finding and retaining staff – a problem.
• Dealing with AML – a problem.
• Dealing with some conveyancing businesses – a problem (due to a lack of legal thinking).

The level of frustration felt by most conveyancers is palpable.

I believe it is this simple. A property transaction is a legal transaction. It has been hijacked by large estate agency chains and bulk conveyancing factories, aided and abetted by lawtech companies which spin the tale that property transaction is akin to an industry, and that tech and case management can fill the gap created by removing legal thinking from the process.

Conveyancing is spoken of as a process which lawyers make difficult by raising legal points. The solution is indemnity insurance, and tech which will speed up the process. The irony is that tech has slowed down the process because a case management checklist approach generates standard enquiries and firms employ people who cannot think about the legalities of the transaction because they are not lawyers or do not have the experience or training.

If a seller was required by law to market a property that was sellable, much of the delay and third-party chuntering would end. Sellers would have to visit a conveyancer before going to an estate agent. The conveyancer would review and perfect title, and ensure all relevant forms were completed and all documents collated into a buyer’s pack.

Contracts could be exchanged on the acceptance of an offer. Lenders could rely on the buyer’s pack to offer a mortgage. Technology could help with the speedier transmission of monies on completion.

This puts the ‘legal’ back into property transactions and addresses all the issues.

All that is required is legislation, but government has abrogated its responsibilities to an ‘industry’ body or two.

Reform of property transaction procedures should be a government priority introduced through legislation.

As for the Law Society, one wonders whether the Society actually cares about conveyancing solicitors. The sponsors of its recent Property Conference suggest tech companies have the influence.

Arthur Michael Robinson

Director and solicitor, Emmersons Solicitors Limited, Newcastle upon Tyne

Information overload

I read the article by Rachel Rothwell (Surveillance state: the dangers of CCTV, Gazette, 13 October) with interest. She is right of course – the state wants to expand surveillance and the reality is that few people care. It is not just the state either; every website tries to collect data, as do most programs and devices. It is not wrong to collect data; the issue is that we have little idea who it is shared with or what is done with it. The reality is that there is no chance of finding out. If the police discover I was in the vicinity of a crime by using face recognition software, then unless they actually interview me I have no way of knowing that my name is now bouncing around in their database.

If the government and the police want this data, then I have nothing to hide. So I do not have an issue with this proposal as long as I have a reciprocal right to find out what databases I am on, who has access to the information, and who has actually accessed the data, for what purpose and who have they shared it with. We rarely find out if someone has been misusing data. There should also be an assurance that if I discover my data has been accessed improperly, the person responsible will be guilty of an offence carrying a term of imprisonment. As far as I am aware there has only been one prosecution of a member of the intelligence services for misusing data, but it seems most unlikely that this is the only person who has ever done it.

The truth here, of course, is that the authorities want to have their cake and eat it. They want unlimited access to information but they do not want to be challenged for improper access or use of that information.

It should be a two-way street. If the state wants access to my data then, after a suitable time has elapsed so that they can confirm I am not a murderer or international terrorist, the quid pro quo is that I should have the absolute right to know that the state has accessed it.

J. Howard Shelley

Solicitor, Birmingham