So, there we have it. Not only do we have to endure the president of the Law Society telling we conveyancers ‘don’t panic’ in the teeth of the worst recession for two generations (see [2009] Gazette, 29 January, 1), we now have the unedifying spectacle of the Gazette as a forum for estate agents. They tell us to pay them referral fees or they will send at least 80% of their conveyancing work elsewhere (see [2009] Gazette, 12 February, 11).

There, in a nutshell, you have the mentality of the estate agent. Pay us to send your clients back to you or else. If ever we, as a profession, need to embrace property selling it is now. We will then control our own destiny and livelihoods, eliminate the sordid practice of having to pay referral fees to third-party introducers and create a further source of revenue for our practices.

Solicitors must embrace this change now, or be forever subservient to the estate agent. How can we be ‘the natural choice of the public for conveyancing’, in the way propounded by Edward Goldsmith of the Direct Conveyancing Association, when we all know where the best interests of the estate agent lie? As Mr Goldsmith says, this recession may well be the ‘catalyst for seismic changes in the provision of estate agency’. As lawyers, we owe it to ourselves to make that change for the financial benefit of our profession and not the estate agents.

Peter Morgan, Osborne Morris & Morgan, Leighton Buzzard