Conveyancing system better for consumers

Chris Merritt, Legal affairs editor | August 22, 2008 | The Australian

THE Law Institute of Victoria says consumers will benefit from the licensing system for non-lawyer conveyancers.

Institute chief executive Michael Brett Young said the scheme would ensure that community safeguards would be extended to cover conveyancers as well as solicitors.

"These people now have to have trust account requirements, education requirements, fidelity and insurance requirements -- it's just better for the community," he said.

Before the licensing scheme was introduced, consumers had no way of knowing if conveyancers were insured and up to date on the law, he said.

"Conveyancers now have to meet the high standards that lawyers have been meeting forever. They are better regulated than they were previously."

But, he said, consumers should still take their conveyancing business to solicitors.

"Lawyers have had five years at university, they have done articled clerks' courses, they have been trained and have a lot more legal education.

"They are better trained than conveyancers and people would still be safer taking their work to solicitors," Mr Brett Young said.

The Australian Institute of Conveyancers said its members already handled about half of the conveyancing transactions in Victoria.

This compares with 95 per cent in South Australia, 85 per cent in Western Australia and 30 per cent in NSW.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said conveyancers would have a key role in designing the planned national electronic conveyancing system.

The new entity that would control the national system would have a skills-based board that would include directors with banking, conveyancing, information technology and other relevant commercial skills, as well as directors with knowledge of state and territory processes concerning land registries, duties and taxes, he said.

The creation of this board was a matter for the states, he said.