National leaders in digital conveyancing, Lawlab and Smartlaw, strive to make one of life’s most stressful experiences – buying/selling property – a seamless and supported digital journey.
Innovators Ian Perkins and Richard Bootle, founders of Lawlab and Smartlaw, equip their clients with a digital toolkit for the sale or purchase of property. They share with us the importance of providing these digital engagement tools, how Property Exchange Australia (PEXA) fits into their strategy and the future of Conveyancing.
“No one is actually providing digital engagement tools for the customer,” Ian reflects on the Conveyancing Industry.
“We know lawyers are critical to protecting our clients from the risk associated in the exchange of property. So, we work hard to make sure our legal team is available to support the client’s journey and make digital tools available to them wherever possible.”
From the first interaction with a client Lawlab and Smartlaw drive the digital experience with their clients, making it easy for them to sign documents and connect with their service providers. They use DocuSign embedded in the Rundl platform to allow clients, agents and brokers to instantly sign and approve most of the pieces of the Conveyancing jigsaw, with PEXA as the final part of the digital package.
“We’ve accelerated our use of PEXA over the past four months,” Richard shares, “in part due to the increased willingness by the banks to answer questions and collaborate with the network.”
“We feel like, thanks to the nature of PEXA’s service, banks and lawyers are now on an equal footing – a much better experience for the lawyer or conveyancer involved. Never before have we been able to track the activities of all parties in a transaction like an audit trail. Even more unthinkable are the collaboration opportunities available to us like Industry Transformation Working Groups. These groups give us the opportunity to sit in a room face-to-face with financial institutions and share frustrations.”
Ian and Richard have been working for the last five years to transform their clients’ and partners’ journeys and this has placed them as national leaders in online transactions so far this year.
“It’s important that we and the industry straddle the current hybrid world between paper and digital and acknowledge the push towards digital,” Ian says. “We use proactive measures. So rather than reacting we proactively place the preference for digital settlement into our process.”
“Every transaction requires us to be an advocate for our customer’s experience and digital engagement tools such as Rundl, DocuSign and PEXA are how we do this.”
“The vision that we have for our business is what we also want for the future of conveyancing: that all buyers and sellers get access to a seamless digital journey supported by great legal advice; after all, this is the largest and most important financial transaction for most of our customers.”
Lawlab and Smartlaw are in the top five transfer transactors nationally this year. To learn how to complete transfers on PEXA, visit the e-Conveyancing Community.
