E conveyancing what the lawyers are being told

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 12:54 14/03/2002 +0000, Donald ramsbottom wrote:
>I have just watched a Training video issued by the college of Law on the
>Land Registration Actt 2002 (it has just received the Royal assent and is
>on the Gov website):
>
>http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2002.htm

Be careful who to blame for what.  The College of Law may think it knows
how this will be implemented, but it may be very much mistaken.

>It was a truly frightening experience. The man from the Government
>Taskforce waxed lyrically about his "transaction matrices" and he gleefuly
>showed off his Notebook with them on. The frightening bit was that when all
>the green lights "were on" the transaction was automatically exchanged!
>There was no explanation of how requisite authority, electronic signatures,
>verification , CAs, or anything on security, other than it would all take
>place on a secure "intranet".
>
>The Next section dealt with electronic conveyancing and several solicitors
>waxed lyrically about PKI. No details of Esigs security, CAs, etc were
>given and even an admission, that the "final technolgy had yet to be
>settled on". This is apparently set to go "Live" in October 2003!

The Land Registry is well aware that while the Lord Chancellor's Department
is pushing PKI, there are other views about what security model best
addresses the relevant risks; and the LR will be taking advice on just
these issues from outside Government, and listening closely to the Law
Society's working party, which in turn is well aware of the issues you
mention.  So this all has some way to go, and the PKI vendors should not
assume there will be an orchard full of low-hanging fruit.

>One particular irony was that there was a recognition that the solicitor
>would have to do the signing on behalf of the client, but we were told the
>client would have to give "written authority" to the solicitor, by signing
>a piece of paper to say the solicitor could do it electronically!
>
>All technical issues were by passed through out, and my none technical
>colleagues watching the same, had some very searching questions on E sigs,
>much of which I have mentioned here before.
>
>The Intranet is distrubing from a privacy point of view as it seems it will
>be hosted on the Land Registry intranet and as such all details of the
>transaction have to be given to the Land Registry before completion, so
>they can construct their "virtual registry". At the present time the first
>any Governmantal organisationor Quango gets to know anything about your
>affairs is when the Registraion takes place after completion (in most cases).
>
>Mortgages and their signing and implementation were studiously avoided, as
>was the cost of implementation, and the cost in time of explaining to the
>little old lady of  95 what PKI was and why it was needed!
>
>So solicitors throughout the land will be of the opinion everything has
>been buttoned down and there are no technical problems, boy are they in for
>a shock.

Not all of them.  And when I gave a talk as part of a day on the subject
organised by the Bristol Law Society, I thought a lot of the audience were
going to watch this space quite carefully.

Regards

Nicholas

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