As implied, online conveyancing is the name given to the process of having your conveyancing done at a distance with most or all functions being managed electronically or by post.

You don’t have to waste your shoe leather knocking doors of your nearest solicitors to establish a cost for performing this service and neither would you want to waste time and money dialling solicitors up to get a quotation. You can simply go online using the Internet and get a quotation for the work.

Usually you have the option of receiving an online quote from two methods. One is where you may find that a solicitor practice local to you has a website and will have the facility to receive your enquiry and respond to you with a quotation or you may find a more widespread service where the solicitors are not local to you but appear through a ‘panel’ of solicitor firms where their fee structures have been programmed into the back-end of the website in order that instant online quotations can be issued. This is exactly how the price comparison sites work for insurance quotes. All quotations are based on a matrix of data being accessed therefore real-time up-to-date quotations can be received.

It would be important, the same as with car insurance, to check out any available reviews that will highlight previous customer experiences as in most cases it would not be practical to travel to the solicitors premises to size them up. As with most things in life, cheapest isn’t always the best but there are many reasons why an online solicitor service would be cheaper than a high street legal practice costs.

Consider rent and rates and staffing fees. The closer you are to London, the more expensive these will be so a solicitor practice based in inner London would have to charge high in order to absorb and recover these costs as opposed to a practice in the north east where the wage and premises costs could be a third of London prices.

You’ll find that some of the more switched on practices will have adopted e-working to a high degree to enable them to case manage your situation automatically on an electronic admin basis. Things like searches and enquiries can all be done electronically and transit and communication delays will be significantly reduced. Communications will be mostly made by email and if both parties’ solicitors are equally switched on with their IT the time it takes to complete a sale should be significantly reduced.

Best of all the solicitor will likely be using a software case tracking system which you will be able to have access to so that all stages of the completion process should be transparent and clearly identifiable enabling you to see exactly what has and has not been done and allowing you to raise queries at any stage.

You will not have to travel anywhere to sign and exchange contracts either as electronic signing or postal signing will prove acceptable and normal.

So in addition to bringing efficiencies of speed by using online conveyancing you should also be able to make a great cost saving as you’ll find that most ‘panel’ solicitors are working each case at an average of only £100 legal costs excluding disbursements because they are working on a volume basis, perhaps dealing with hundreds of conveyancing cases each month.