Conveyancing - its impact on climate change
Paper feeds the conveyancing and mortgage industry. We know we feel a pang of guilt when we hit the print button or copy and collate five times the 100 page vendor statement for the sale of another apartment in Southbank. The agent then makes further copies to hand out to prospective buyers. There just seems to be an insatiable cycle of wasted paper in the endless grind of the property and mortgage industry. In Victoria, it is a sobering to think that residential conveyancing consumes at least 52 km of paper every year.
By comparison, former federal Human Services Minister Joe Hockey said his department would look at destroying 275km of paper records held by Centrelink and three square kilometres of Medicare records as part of the access card project to digitise all its paper-based records.
The National Electronic Conveyancing System is coming and that will mean no more physical settlements and no more over-the-counter stamping and registration of the transfer and mortgage. But this will not put an end to the paper warfare. We will still have the requirement of the vendor statement, the contract of sale, the mortgage and documenting the loan contract.
But can we change? What changes can we make, collectively, as an industry to reverse the trend? The legal office is often just a great big paper processing machine. It receives, files, retrieves, creates, file notes, collates, copies, distributes and archives paper - piles of it. While the term the "paperless office" was coined in the 80s with the advent of the PC and the word processor, these tools actually spurred an addiction to paper. We now have the tools available to create "digital paper". PDF technology is the new environmentally-friendly digital paper.
Can we make conveyancing and mortgage processing an entirely digital process, not unlike share trading and the money markets that turnover billions daily? The answer is an emphatic Yes.
Canada and New Zealand may have led the way for electronic registration of land dealings, but Victoria is leading the way forward for online electronic settlements. A Victorian-based company 247legal.com.au has developed the first web-based delivery of vendor statements and contract documentation. The system is fully automated and saves time and money. Our firm has been using the systems for the past 24 months. True to the firm's roots to develop an ethically-based conveyancing practice, it does not possess a photocopier. Our costs are down and our revenues have grown exponentially.
The company 247legal.com.au provides an excellent forum to develop the concepts of digital conveyancing. The vendor disclosure concepts are well and truly proven. The next step would be having the purchaser electronically acknowledge receipt of the vendor statement, without actually ever having to print and physically sign the document.
There are not really any regulatory barriers to doing this, just years of entrenched practices of vendors and buyers signing physical documents. Introducing such changes is beyond the efforts of any individual. What is required is a quorum of lawyers to get together and initiate change. A group of like-minded young lawyers seeking change would be the ideal forum.
If we really want to stretch the boundaries and remove an even bigger environmental footprint, we should tackle the mortgage industry head on. The lack of communication is the problem. What needs to be done? Financial institutions must give lawyers and conveyancers:
• online tracking of client's mortgage status;
• online booking of settlements;
• online advice of available funds; and
• online settlement cheque details.
Lawyers unfortunately are locked into systems that see great swathes of forests disappearing for the wood chip industry for paper manufacture. And for what? Once the property transaction has settled, the transfer and mortgage are registered, money banked, who ever looks at the file again?
The article was put together by Brett Hayton, Jaci Wang and Michael Jellis of Hayton Kosky Lawyers.
Young Lawyers Journal Issue 36 April 2007
Editors Judd Young, White Cleland and Adam Bushby, Nicholls Legal
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