Based in Liverpool, Bluebird Support Services offers virtual legal secretaries and is now launching a new Conveyancing Assistant service for solicitors

A Liverpool-based company of virtual legal secretaries, Bluebird Support Services, has launched a new Conveyancing Assistant service to help solicitors deal with the influx of conveyancing work.

Many practitioners are reporting long hours and weekend working to keep up with the huge number of transactions. Delays in transactions are impacted by slow turnaround of mortgage applications, the return of searches and surveys of properties.

All of this is causing a great stress to the sellers and buyers who are most likely making the largest purchase of their lifetime. It’s imperative that practitioners have the time required to carry out often complicated legal work is done correctly and there are no shortcuts to be had.

Recruitment of conveyancing staff is competitive as almost every legal practice that has a conveyancing department is overloaded and staff often prefer to work in their local geographical area.  At the same time, there is also a lot of potential employers wary of hiring too many staff in an uncertain period.

Jayne Smith, managing director of Bluebird Support Services, said: “I’m hearing that stress levels are at an all-time high with many conveyancers working seven days a week and long into the night.

“Stress levels are exacerbated by lockdown conditions and many are struggling to have any sort of work life balance. There is light at the end of the tunnel when the bulk of transactions are hoping to complete before the SDLT holiday expires but my clients are telling me it will be a long time before workloads return to normal.

“Like other services we have launched, this has come from the direct request of our clients.  Our clients will have an immediate relief of stress that’s currently placed upon them and they won’t have to worry about recruiting new staff in difficult circumstances.”

The conveyancing market is known for being competitive and many firms operate on a fixed fee basis for standard sale and purchase transactions. The Conveyancing Assistant service will help legal practices scale up without having to worry about incurring costly overheads.

Rob Hailstone, director of Bold Legal Group, has 700 conveyancing firms in his membership organisation. He added: “There is no doubt that many firms are struggling with their conveyancing volumes. Enlisting an efficient service that can help process some of the more routine work makes absolute sense.”