In the latest Today's Conveyancer podcast David Opie is joined by Scott Reece.
With a background in the installation of technology in medical practices, Scott (by his own admission) was somewhat of a novice when he and his wife joined the X-Press Legal Services network in 2007 in a complete change of scenery.
Their franchise survived the torrid 2008-2009 recession in tact and 15 years later now wears two hats in the business. One is his franchisee hat where he covers the Cumbria region, the other is his role as IT Manager at X-Press Legal as a whole, supporting the franchisee network and building platforms and integrations for the benefit of clients.
Scott’s share his own tales of the fun and games of being a search agent where digitisation is sorely needed in Local Land Charges departments; with one story where the council limits the number of search appointments to 4 a day because the Land Charges Officer has to traipse up and down 3 flights of stairs with Kalamazoo ledgers to provide the information to search agents.
Progress is being made here with 50 councils now moving over to a digitised Local Land Charges register at the time of publication.
In his role as head of IT Scott is a proactive member of a community of compliance professionals. Digital ID checks and onboarding remain a key risk for conveyancing firms. He also discusses the role technology has to play in re-checking and refreshing data as transactions move along to ensure that material changes that could impact the transaction are reported.
The Today's Conveyancer podcast can be found on your preferred podcast provider and also at www.todaysconveyancer.co.uk. Subscribe and listen in for all the latest conveyancing industry news and views.