The public is being asked to relate any bad experiences they have had with lawyers doing conveyancing in the ACT.
The Conveyancing Reform Lobby Group is opposed to lawyers having a monopoly on conveyancing. A spokesman for the group, Canberra businessman Greg Williams, said yesterday, “Solicitors over-charge and under-service.”
He has placed an advertisement in The Canberra Times today, asking that people send details of their complaints to the Conveyancing Reform Lobby Group PO Box 238 Woden.
Mr Williams hopes this will form a base to present to members of the Legislative Assembly which is looking at conveyancing law.
He is worried that the ACT will suffer the fate of NSW where the Law Society used its political muscle to prevent significant changes to the legal monopoly because the new law requires too high qualifications for non-lawyer conveyancers.
The ACT Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, has announced he will prepare an issues paper on letting land brokers do conveyancing.
The president of the ACT Law Society, Russell Miller, said, “Solicitors have little to be concerned about. We know that the conveyancing market here is the most competitive in Australia and that land brokers will be hard pressed to compete with us.
“The community, on the other hand should be very concerned. The Government is proposing to allow people who are not fully qualified lawyers to try to do conveyancing work for unwary consumers. Community funds will have to be diverted into setting up a bureaucracy to licence and attempt to control these brokers.”