The CA is the best place to be able to shape key changes and developments in the conveyancing marketplace, meet the right people in the business and develop our own firm to become one of the best players in a growing part of the property industry.
Victoria Marshall, Shulmans LLP
About Us
The Conveyancing Association is a non-profit making body representing conveyancing operations throughout the UK with a view to shaping the future of conveyancing. We are the voice of the commercially-minded, service-focused conveyancer, ensuring that we have real influence on those who make the decisions that affect our market. We aim to be the first point of contact for all industry stakeholders or interested parties who need to discuss conveyancing.
Our members process a wide variety of conveyancing and property transactions acting for both private and corporate clients. All members process their work supported by IT systems which are focused on ‘quality’ and ‘service’.
We are represented on all serious, conveyancing focus groups and will continue to become involved in any new groups in order that our members are kept fully informed.
Challenges
The Conveyancing Association has been established in the context of a number of challenges facing the Conveyancing sector in the UK, including:
Lenders have been reducing the number of firms on their panels – often without any consultation with the industry or firms involved. This move poses the greatest threat to the future of conveyancing firms that the market has seen in recent years.
- The Conveyancing Association will lobby and play a leading role in this process, helping quality firms to maintain their panel positions and assisting members in defending this threat to their business.
The Legal Services Act will be an opportunity for some Conveyancers and a threat to others. In 2011 this Act will change the rules enabling additional businesses to enter into and impact upon the conveyancing arena.
- The Conveyancing Association will help members understand the detail of these changes. Different businesses entering our market will affect firms in different ways. Without doubt the LSA will significantly change the future landscape of conveyancing and conveyancers need to embrace those changes.
A steady stream of new regulatory and legislative requirements on conveyancers is making compliance an ever-more challenging prospect for firms.
- The Conveyancing Association represents members at decision making tables, working hard so that further regulation is not imposed without conveyancers’ direct involvement. The Association helps members to understand incoming changes through our Technical and Compliance Committee.
The recent restriction of the solicitors’ Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) market has left conveyancers with the very real possibility of not being able to obtain ongoing cover in future.
- The Conveyancing Association will provide members with a stamp of quality, and access to the Association’s national network of members to provide support to firms experiencing challenges in obtaining PII.
If you would like to discuss how these or any other issues are impacting upon your business – and how the Conveyancing Association can help – then please give us a call on 020 7618 9141.
Who We Are
Chairman: EDWARD GOLDSMITH
Edward Goldsmith is Chairman of The Conveyancing Association. He is passionate about improving the home buying and selling market with the belief that the industry needs to come together to face the multitude of issues and challenges facing the conveyancing sector.
He is a partner in Goldsmith Williams which he set up with Chris Williams in 1984. Based in Liverpool, it now has over 250 staff. The company is recognised as one of the largest providers of legal services for the mortgage intermediary market.
He plays an active role in the property sector, forming the Homebuyers Group, the first national marketing network for solicitors, in the early 1980’s. He also sits on the Executive Committee of the E-Homebuying Forum which aims to bring greater efficiency, transparency and cohesion to the home buying and selling process. Goldsmith Williams are also founder members of the Equity Release Solicitors Alliance.
Edward was President of Liverpool Law Society in 2001 having been a Joint Honorary Secretary for four years and the Editor of the Liverpool Law Society Bulletin for four years previous to that.
Treasurer: DAVID HODGSON
David Hodgson is the Treasurer of the Conveyancing Association. David is a Partner in Blacks Solicitors LLP in Leeds which he helped to set up in 1989.
David came to Leeds in the early 1980s and initially practiced for many years as a Conveyancing Solicitor in the traditional “High Street” private client conveyancing market before setting up the specialist conveyancing division at Blacks, known as Blacks Direct in the early 1990s. David is therefore extremely experienced in both the local and national market dealing with privately introduced clients as well as corporate introducers.
Blacks Direct is a founder member of the Conveyancing Association and has served throughout on several of its sub-committees. David is also a founder member of ERSA, The Equity Release Solicitors Alliance, founded in 2008. ERSA is an alliance of established law firms specialising in the field of Equity Release and which promotes the importance of specialist legal advice for clients as well as excellent service.