Several Land Registry Offices in the world have started to look at the proposition of E-Conveyancing. E-Conveyancing is the response to the inevitable shift of commerce to the Electronic world and to the World Wide Web. For some people this is a smart move because that is where everything is going anyways. E-Conveyancing is set to relieve the world of all the paper work that is associated with that of Regular Conveyancing. E-Conveyancing is pretty much similar to that of regular Conveyancing, the process is the same, the only element missing is paper.



E-Conveyancing like other new ideas has its critics; perhaps the same way as the telephone and the internet had theirs before. This is the future of commerce and it is only natural that Land Registry will follow suit.

So, let us truly define what E-Conveyancing is. E-Conveyancing is the shift of the present Conveyancing system into an electronic form. This way, everything is done electronically, from the contracts, the exchange of titles to the affixation of electronic signatures. Perhaps, the only thing that will not change is the payment, because some people can still choose to pay in cash. Well, not for long. Large sums as we know are now better handled via electronic transfer from bank to bank.

E-Conveyancing does not mean the elimination of the lawyer. They still play a big part in the process making sure that everything is up to legal standards and that the parties involved get a fair and legal treatment as stipulated in the contracts that were mutually agreed upon. E-Conveyancing will be made possible through the increase in availability of information regarding the properties that will be dealt with. It means that, E-Conveyancing is not an overnight thing. The transfer of written and paper data into electronic information takes time and is bound to be taxing. But, once it's all done and new Conveyancing contracts are made into electronic forms then things will go much smoother.

As said, E-Conveyancing has its own set of lobbyist and people who oppose the idea. Some people even go as far as saying that E-Conveyancing will never get off as nothing can effectively replace the traditional methods of Conveyancing. The greatest issue raised against E-Conveyancing is perhaps the uneasiness that people feel about signing documents electronically. They feel that this diminishes the legality of the process.

That is the same thing said when banks introduced the ATM, now look where we are with the ATM technology. In the United States alone there are as many ATM machines as there are Starbucks shops.

We believe that E-Conveyancing is a wise move and that it is only the beginning. More and more firms and more transactions in the future will be done the electronic way. Starting now is a very wise decision, it may take some time and may seem highly unconventional and it will undoubtedly have its own sets of flaws. But, as anything else, it will manage to get back up on its feet and learn from mistakes making it into a flawless system.