There has been a recent trend in the industry emphasising that post-completion is not an afterthought, and it is not administrative. Acknowledging these points is good management practice, but the board must take this a step further and consider what liability risks post-completion raises.
For too long, post-completion has been treated as the unglamorous paperwork that follows the excitement of exchange and completion. But post-completion liability must be on the agenda for progressive firms.
This is a blind spot that needs to be addressed which ties in directly with liability.
The Post-Completion Blind Spot and Liability
As the board focuses on business development and fee generation and now with the fast-paced new entrants into the legal field – artificial intelligence – is post-completion being pushed back even further, quietly absorbing the operational risk that nobody at the top table is watching closely enough?
This attitude creates blind spot liability. For example, requisitions not being addressed quickly enough and causing cancellations or errors that have not been communicated to clients can develop into serious issues when reselling or refinancing.
The question every board should be asking is straightforward: do we know what is happening in our post-completion department, and more importantly, do our clients know what is happening with their transaction?
The Social Media Mirror
The fact is clients do know about what is happening with post-completion delays and they are talking about it publicly.
Online review platforms such as Google, Trustpilot, and ReviewSolicitors have fundamentally changed the accountability landscape for firms. This is a new paradigm to which the board must pay attention to.
Social media has become the public portal for clients to openly voice their experience. Previously, firms could keep such dissatisfaction out of public view, with a client complaint confined to an email or letter and never seen by prospective clients.
Those times were a blessing for the non-performing firms. Not in today’s world. Bad reviews impact a firm’s future business pipeline; this is a serious liability factor that sits with post-completion delays.
Boards that are not routinely reviewing their firm’s online feedback are missing one of the most valuable and honest data sets available to them. Client reviews are, in effect, a real-time audit of operational performance and post-completion is where the most consistent and damaging failures tend to surface.
Unlike a compliance audit or an internal file review, these assessments are written by the people who matter most: the clients themselves. This is nothing new, but what is, is how quick and easy it is for a prospective client to view such data.
What Good Board Oversight Looks Like
A conveyancing boardroom should give equal time to the several stages of conveyancing and leave another section of the meeting to fuse the stages together. Progressive firms should begin to treat post-completion governance with the same seriousness as risk management and regulatory compliance. This is what good post-completion looks like.
If a board cannot answer basic questions about its post-completion performance, it is embarking on dangerous territory on many fronts: lack of repeat business, removal from lender panel work and regulatory scrutiny to name but a few.
Client review data should be formally integrated into board reporting cycles. This is not about monitoring vanity scores or chasing five-star averages for marketing purposes. It is about identifying systemic weaknesses before they escalate into negligence claims or regulatory investigations.
A recurring cluster of reviews mentioning poor communication after completion is an early warning signal, one that many boards currently overlook because nobody has been formally tasked with reading, analysing, and escalating that feedback. Generated replies sent by a chatbot do not acknowledge a complaint, it is another tick box exercise.
Post-completion is still perceived to be a ‘tick-box’ exercise by many, yet this perception creates so many errors and mistakes. Applying this mindset towards reviews will just add to the current post-completion drama.
Reputation Is a Strategic Asset
The conveyancing market is highly competitive and increasingly commoditised by volume providers and online platforms. In this environment, reputation is one of the few genuine differentiators available which cannot be diluted.
Firms that consistently deliver excellent post-completion service, that proactively update clients and inform them of requisition delays are the winners for tomorrow.
To implement and deliver specific post-completion policies and procedures is what gives post-completion definition, creating a compliant and service level agreement structure that can be defined and measured.
When this happens, it makes it onto the board’s agenda. Post completion is then not a blind spot and not a liability but a successful cog in a forward-thinking law firm.