Conveyancing Quality Scheme Toolkit (4th edition)

CQS has been with us for over 12 years now. For the first eight of those years, conveyancing practitioners were only provided with two editions of this invaluable little guide (both of which were published within the first two years of the scheme coming into existence).

The introduction of the Core Practice Management Standards (CPMS), alongside the updated Conveyancing Protocol, in 2019 brought with them sufficient changes to the scheme to justify publication of the 3rd edition in July 2019.

We now live in a very different world as a result of a number of factors, including a pandemic, and a degree of political and financial uncertainty which very few could have foreseen then. The Law Society had three (admittedly disrupted) years in which to observe how the original CPMS worked in practice, prior to publishing the updated CPMS in February 2022.

With Brexit adding the prefix ‘UK’ to the version of the GDPR which now applies in England and Wales, and with the experience gained from four years of working with the SRA’s 2019 Standards and Regulations, it is fair to say that a new edition of this toolkit was very much due, and possibly even a little overdue.

Coming in at around 40 pages longer, this edition retains the same basic format as the previous one. Most chapters consist almost entirely of template policies, procedures and registers aimed at inspiring (or reassuring) those charged with obtaining (or maintaining) compliance with this increasingly demanding scheme. I particularly liked the thorough, but refreshingly short, standard file review forms (for both sale and purchase), which are certainly less daunting than many precedents which I have seen (and used) previously. Gone are the CD ROMS of old. The templates are now all available to download for those who sign up to the Law Society My LS service.  

Other chapters offer brief narratives pertinent to the chapter headings, with detailed cross-referencing to the appropriate Law Society practice notes.

As always this book will not do all of the work necessary to get or keep you CQS-compliant. But it should at least help you identify any gaps in your current policies and procedures following the 2022 CPMS update, as well as give you an idea of the content, tone and style of the documentation which Law Society auditors will expect to see if your practice is chosen for that dreaded audit.

Any CQS-accredited practice which does not have, and extract full value from, this reasonably priced update can certainly consider themselves to be missing a trick.

Sean Gordon is a non-practising solicitor, and former COLP and DPO

Conveyancing Quality Scheme Toolkit (4th edition) 

★★★★✩

If you do not know what CQS is, you must have been lying down under a pile of contested probate files for the last decade or so. If, like the rest of us, you do know what it is, you will also likely know that there are lots of ways that you can approach the policies and procedures element of the scheme.

The temptation for lawyers is always, I respectfully observe, to overcomplicate things, writing policies for all possible outcomes, which can make the policies and procedures themselves unwieldly – and misses the point of the accreditation in the first place. The idea is to make the thing workable, and to protect us, our practices and our clients in the process.

Given that this is a book of forms and precedents, I was pleasantly surprised by its coherence. I have actually found it easy to follow.

We have also shared it with some of our ‘new to conveyancing’ younger people who have also found it really helpful in informing their approach to practice.

We have already been updating some of our standard letters as a result of having access to the toolkit, which is as good a recommendation as I can give. This sort of book, with everything in one place, is value for money. But I would have given it five out of five, had it come with a CD or online access.

Anna Newport is a solicitor and director at Newport Land & Law, West Yorkshire