Potty Ideas #17: e-conveyancing

I am all in favour of automation - after all its my living.  And getting the Land Registry  into the 20th century seems like a great idea.  However the idea that all legal documents should be held in a central repository and digitally signed is one of the pottier ideas to come out government.

What this will mean (if it goes ahead)  is that instead of signing the various documents involved in house purchase, you will instead give authority to your conveyancer to sign them (digitally) on your behalf. 

For those who don’t instantly think this is a potty idea here are my first reactions:

• The conveyancer is changed from an administrator who shuffles paper around to a direct participant in a 6-7 figure transaction.  If you think this is going to come without a price tag you are as potty as the people who dreamt this up.
•  You may think that conveyancing is done by your friendly professional solicitor.  Well I have news for you, its done by underpaid clerks who you have probably never met and might just decide to transfer the property to their relative in China.   
• The signature on the documents doesn’t go away, it is going to be held in an authorisation document held by your conveyancer who (a) just went out of business, (b) premises just burned down, (c) had their files stolen (d) just had a disgrutled employee walk out with their passwords and they havn't got round to changing them yet - tick whichever applicable.
• Does anyone seriously think I am going to give anyone power of attorney to sign on my behalf for a transaction of this importance?  No way baby. 

So this procedure is going to be more expensive, riskier and hard for customers to accept. 

Yet someone up there is progressing this with all despatch.    Some guy called David Lammy just approved and endosed the plan. 

So sit back and enjoy the show as this project progresses towards stages 5 through 7 of a typical project:: search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent and promotion of those not involved.  After all you are paying for it.