Dominic Cullis is Managing Director of Easy Convey and heads up the Legal Software Suppliers Association’s working group on conveyancing. As Glynn Morris prepares to take over as CEO of the LSSA, we asked Dominic about the issues currently being discussed by the conveyancing branch of the organisation.
How long has Easy Convey been running?
“We have been going since 2000 and CASA, our case management system, is now used in over 100,000 property transactions a year. Our largest client is in the top ten conveyancing firms and our smallest client works part time from her spare bedroom. So we cater for all ends of the market.
“Easy Convey started as an evening and weekend project for me back in 1995/96. I was an electronic engineer by trade – then I grew fed up of spending most of the year designing something just for a salesman on three times my salary to go out and talk about it. So I decided to join that side of the business and went into computer sales – then I developed my own system, a bit like Windows and was retained as a consultant by Kodak, Toshiba and various other worldwide companies. Along the way I met a commercial lawyer who suggested there was a market for good quality legal software at an affordable price for high street conveyancing firms. So I developed something – it went out to my first clients in 1998 and then, realising it had a future, I started it as a stand-alone business. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
“Easy Convey was at the forefront when the conveyancing process started to move from physical forms to the electronic with CASA; we were the first to do case tracking and text messaging – that was possible with our software in 1998; and we pioneered a lot of the work with Land Registry Business Gateway. Now we have ten staff based in Godalming, Surrey. We’re lean and mean but we’re probably involved in between 10-14% of all conveyancing transactions.”
And what’s your role in the LSSA?
“I was chair a few years ago – generally the chair is voted for and serves a couple of years – and now I head up what we call the Land Registry working party but really it’s the conveyancing working party. We’re all competitors but we work collaboratively. Now I’m chairing a group that is working with Veyo to explore integration with case management systems.”
What’s your opinion of Veyo?
“At the moment, nobody has seen the live product – we were there a fortnight ago and we weren’t even able to have a proper demo. There was some sample data but it didn’t really tell us a great deal.
“In my opinion, there’s nothing on offer that hasn’t been readily available for many years with the existing case management software applications – a lot of it we’ve been doing at Easy Convey since 1998! The only thing that is different about Veyo is how it’s approaching the deal room.
“There were ludicrous claims in the Sunday Times recently, supposedly supported by the Law Society, that 75% of all conveyancing transactions will be using Veyo within its first few months. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just a dream without any foundation. I’d be very surprised if it’s successful.
“Veyo’s yet to convince the Licensed Conveyancers – although that’s only a small percentage of the number of practices it actually makes up a very significant proportion of the number of transactions. Larger conveyancing practices of which many are members of the Conveyancing Association that represents 14% of all sale/purchase transactions and are involved in 80% of remortgage work – if Veyo can’t convince them, then that’s huge hole. A few of the very big firms have developed their own case management systems in-house. Do they need to buy off-the-shelf?
“So, I think there’s a big discrepancy in what Veyo has seen in numbers of people expressing an interest to the numbers of people that will actually sign up. Apparently 1,500 firms have asked to receive information about Veyo – but how much of that is just curiosity and how many will actually take the leap of faith and go for Veyo?
“What frustrates me is thinking back to the work the E-Homebuying Forum was doing over five years ago now – I was part of that and we were lobbying ministers to change the home buying process. And I do wonder whether perhaps the Law Society would have better served its members if it had helped us with that – with improving the home buying process – rather than investing all this money in Veyo. Sure, a Chain View will be a useful tool to people up and down the chain but no amount of technology is going to stop a potential buyer pulling out right up to the day of exchange.
“I think the Veyo execs are just hoping that the lenders will come on board and require its use – that there will be that sort of pressure. Clearly Veyo’s marketing is aimed at the consumer. At the LSSA we’ve all laughed because we started off with tiny budgets in our garages or our bedrooms creating systems that are now used across 80% of the market. And Veyo, which hasn’t even launched yet, is advertising at the Six Nations!”
What’s the general view at the LSSA on Veyo?
“We’ve just finalised a statement for Veyo to use in its publicity about how it will work with the LSSA members, which reads: “The LSSA have set up a working party to consider technical options for members’ possible integration with Veyo. Individual members will make their own decisions whether to integrate. Veyo will be able to meet again with the working party after their initial launch to discuss the method of integration (including security considerations), the data elements which may be included and the relative priority of each element.”
“At the moment, to Veyo’s surprise, there seems to be a huge amount of negativity about it within the industry. So everybody is holding a waiting brief. Meantime the LSSA members are addressing how integration can take place – then, if Veyo is successful and there’s demand from our respective client bases, there’s a formula to work from. We’ll respond to the market. But the vast majority of conveyancing practises are not going to be sitting there re-keying information into Veyo to make Veyo work – not unless the market wants it.”
Email security is a big issue at the moment – is the LSSA addressing that?
“That’s an area the case management providers have been looking at for quite some time – not because of security concerns, originally, but because of limitations on the size of attachments. So now, many LSSA members provide a secure, encrypted environment in which to send and receive documents and progress updates.
“Looking, for example, at how we work with Stamp Duty Land Tax returns – we create a fingerprint of the data that is transmitted from a law firm’s computer to HMRC. When the data arrives there and is unencrypted the HMRC compare that fingerprint against the one they have for the data. If the fingerprints are the same the transaction will be completed – if they aren’t the same and somehow that data has become corrupted en route, HMRC’s system asks the case management system to re-submit it. So that’s a really, really safe and secure process.
“Another good example of stringent security is that around the Land Registry’s Business Gateway – each and every user has to have a certificate on their computer that matches a certificate at the Land Registry to enable the computers to talk to each other.
“So yes, email security is very important to the LSSA – indeed, the use of software online is covered in our code of conduct.”
What big technological advances have been made?
“The Land Registry Business Gateway is a big advance – we are moving gradually away from forms to a situation where law firms are able to request information through their case management systems direct from the Land Registry. And that work will continue until the law firm is available to do everything there was a form for in a purely electronic way.”
And what about further developments in technology the future?
“All of the LSSA firms are committed to reacting very quickly to changes in legislation or regulation. For example, when there were changes to the Stamp Duty Land Tax rules in the pre-budget speech, Easy Convey had an update available the following morning.
“Also if we can see a benefit to our clients in technological advancement and innovation, we will make that happen. One of the great advantages of technology is that, with The Cloud and other virtual servers, we have greater working flexibility. I’ve recently made the bold move from Godalming to Spain, where I believe I can give my family a better lifestyle. But I’m able to serve my clients perfectly from here as well. I come back to England one week a month for my face-to-face meetings – and the LSSA meetings – and I work the rest of the time remotely.
“If something crops up in the interim I just fly over. I’ve said to my clients that, if there’s a problem that needs to be dealt with urgently, I can be at your office first thing tomorrow morning. If it’s a firm in Manchester or Newcastle, I can fly straight there from Spain and arrive faster than if I’d jumped in the car and driven from Godalming!
“And, as I always say to my staff in the office, if I had my door shut and you emailed a question and I emailed a response, does it make any difference whether I’m upstairs or 1200 miles away?”
Now the recession is over are LSSA members seeing an upturn in investment in technology?
“Definitely – there was a period of time during the recession when it was almost pointless having a sales team! Early on in the recession, people came to their annual renewals and made the decision to renew for fewer users so the number of users of our technology was being reduced. But I can certainly say that now – and I know other LSSA members agree – we have more users than we had pre-recession so we’ve won back the users and firms we lost and more.
“Still, I would strike a note of caution and say that there’s been a little bit of a slowdown in the first quarter of this year in residential conveyancing. We’re in quite a unique position as we see instructions on the day they are entered on to our system and then we obviously see the day of completion as well. So we get the full picture right across England and Wales and there definitely does seem to be a bit of a slowing in overall transactions over the last couple of months. Whether that’s nerves ahead of the election, I don’t know.”
