This year has all the elements of the extraordinary - e-courts, e-chambers, EFS, e-commerce.

And whilst we are coping with these new measures to stay alive in an increasingly competitive world, the conveyancing lawyer remains vulnerable when scale fees are abolished. And this can happen in the not-too-distant future.

With large tracts of real property in Singapore coming under the Registry of Land Titles and Deeds, and only a fraction awaiting conversion soon, there is little reason to believe that the authorities will not free scale fees soon enough, notwithstanding the Minister's call for a review.

Professor S Jayakumar informed Parliament in early March that the Government will set up a committee to review conveyancing fees on property transactions. He reiterated to the House that he had said 'several times' before that the legal profession should prepare itself for the eventuality that scale fees be abolished.

Cries for postponing the implementation of such freeing of fees may be legitimate at this hour (with the economy picking up), but not for long.

Nine years have passed since a request was made in Parliament to review conveyancing scale fees and to consider allowing paralegals to handle conveyancing matters.

In 1992, Minister for Law, Professor Jayakumar, told Parliament that the Government would proceed cautiously in following the British practice of allowing non-lawyers to do conveyancing work due to the need to expend money (given the scarce resources) to establish an entirely new parallel system to license and discipline non-lawyers who act as conveyancers.

In 1994, the Conveyancing Fees Review Committee, chaired by Justice Chao Hick Tin, was formed to review conveyancing scale fees.

The Committee recommended that the mandatory fixed scale fee be retained for various reasons, including fairness, the protection of small consumers, the prevention of overcharging and ensuring fair remuneration so that good lawyers would still find it attractive to practise in this branch of the law. However, there was a resulting reduction in scale fees.

This February, after Council's deliberation, the Conveyancing Practice Committee held a dialogue session with conveyancers, and it was indeed a vigorous discussion of the same issues.

A majority still hold the view that the scale should remain. A free market, some say, will lead to increased shoddiness, negligence and inadequate services for consumers, even if costs are, at some point, reduced for consumers.

On the other hand, abolition advocates argue that the scale insulates the incompetent. Law firms, some say, should find their niche and run their businesses cost-effectively. Others say that higher fees are payable for higher value transactions under the scale, where there is greater risk and liability if something goes amiss and that clients should not have to pay for a lawyer's incompetence or negligence.

Above all, in the ultimate analysis, it is the interest of the public that is paramount.

Whilst the legal profession examines these old issues, it faces a barrage of new challenges — multi-disciplinary practices, globalisation, the IT revolution which has brought a total transformation of legal practice and the court system.

Although we may currently advocate the retention of conveyancing scale fees and the monopoly, it is time enough to re-examine these issues, and ask ourselves new questions in the light of new circumstances.

For instance, we cannot ignore the on-going conversion of titles to the Torrens system, the new breed of paralegals graduating from Temasek Polytechnic and the consumer's desire for a 'one-stop shop' when he purchases a property.

We can begin by studying possible new ways that lawyers can be involved in the real estate arena. Can lawyers take active roles as both realtors and lawyers for their clients in property transactions? Can lawyers collaborate with real estate agents, interior designers, architects and/or engineers in corporate entities to supply an array of services? Indeed, incursions into the legal market by non-lawyers and business service firms will continue, Chinese Walls notwithstanding.

Conveyancers may also ponder how best to run their practices if a free market situation should ever materialise in the future. Do they wish to explore new areas of work? Can their firms develop other areas of business? Will they or their staff need retraining or the acquisition of new skills? Should new work procedures or systems be developed?

These are all difficult and painful questions, but hopefully, through open discussion and the sharing of resources, ideas and expertise, conveyancers should by now know that they must change their habits of practice if they wish to remain relevant to the profession, otherwise they will just be part of the shake-out in these competitive risk markets. Conveyancing lawyers have to be extraordinary when the changes come.

Palakrishnan
President
The Law Society of Singapore

As part of the Law Society's vision for the Year 2000: 'Reaching Out' to its Members, Mr Palakrishnan, the President of the Law Society, will be available to meet members at the Law Society's premises fortnightly, on Saturdays, between 10.30am to 12noon. These sessions will also help to gather feedback to effect better policy and administrative initiatives for the profession. The next two sessions will be on 8 and 22 April 2000.