A specialist legal advisory service is urging conveyancers to use the reopening of the housing market as an opportunity to increase their fees.
A two-page note released by Legal Mentors starts by saying: “Pricing - NOW is the time to increase your pricing.”
The note explains that with the market unfrozen again, many law firms - some of which will be heavily reliant on conveyancing - will face cash flow issues as they balance new work with possibly fewer staff, especially in the short term when the market will still be returning to more normal levels of activity.
It then says: “”Whilst cutting fees to attract new instructions may help cash flow in the short-term, it comes at direct cost to the bottom line. It might seem counter-intuitive but it really is possible, as proven by numerous of our solicitor and conveyancer clients, to both increase pricing and win more of the instructions you really want, especially for those clients wanting to move quickly.”
Legal Mentors says conveyancers should no longer ask a few basic questions and “send their quote by email, albeit nicely branded, then sit back and wait for the prospective client, should they like your price, to call again.”
Instead it urges conveyancers to chase potential leads, and it claims that surveys show 80 per cent of prospective clients choose conveyancers on a range of factors, not price alone.
“As the market re-starts, now is a good time to reconsider the terms and pricing of your conveyancing. It is quite possible to be more profitable handling fewer transactions with even a modest 10 per cent increase in pricing” explains the advisory firm.
It then gets into its stride, saying: “Conveyancing has been too cheap for too long. NOW IS THE TIME TO INCREASE YOUR PRICING. Increase your pricing, generate more income with no additional cost, improve cash flow and increase profitability.”
As a PS to the note, it says: “A practice we trained on a Monday last autumn decided on the day to increase the pricing of their conveyancing by a minimum of £200. The team embraced our training and by the Friday of that week the firm was not only converting more opportunities into additional new instructions but at the higher price too. That could just as easily be your firm.”
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It's not the price that is the problem, it's the poor quality of conveyancers and solicitors, and the outdated legal system which hinders clients, firms need to be proactive and cut the average transaction time down to weeks not months, then they can charge what they want as will be delivering a better service. Firms which sit on too many files and offer shoddy service to all their clients shouldn't be in business, hopefully lockdown will shake some of these firms up but I doubt it.
Spot on Iain, and you are right, not a single change is obvious as new deals start up again. Same shoddy outfits. Same old business models - conveyancers and the estate agents supporting it. Missed opportunity to be better.
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