Case Studies › Conveyancing

Conveyancing Document Intake Desk

How a 6-person conveyancing firm stopped losing matter readiness races.

The firm

Harbour Conveyancing is a small residential conveyancing practice in Bristol — two solicitors, three licensed conveyancers, and one part-time admin assistant. They handle 40-60 residential matters at any given time, split between buyer-side purchases, seller-side sales, and remortgages.

They're good at the legal work. They're drowning in the document chasing.

The problem

Every conveyancing matter starts the same way: a pile of documents lands, and someone has to chase, check, and organise them before any actual legal work can begin.

For a typical buyer-side purchase, the firm needs:

• Client ID and proof of address
• Source-of-funds evidence (bank statements, gift letters, donor ID)
• Title register and title plan from HMLR
• Draft contract from the seller's solicitor
• TA6 property information form (completed by seller)
• TA10 fittings and contents form
• TA7 leasehold information form (if leasehold)
• Mortgage offer
• Search results (LLC1, CON29, environmental, water)
• Management pack / LPE1 (if leasehold)

What actually happens:

A matter opens on Monday. The admin assistant emails the client a list of required documents. The client sends some, forgets others. The seller's solicitor sends the contract pack but the TA6 has three unanswered questions. The mortgage broker promises the offer "next week." The management pack from the freeholder is delayed. Nobody notices the gifted deposit letter is missing until the solicitor asks for it three weeks later.

By week four, the matter still isn't exchange-ready. The client is calling daily. The estate agent is calling daily. The broker is calling. The solicitor is spending her afternoon explaining to three different people that they're waiting on documents, not on legal work.

The cost:

• The admin assistant spends 15-20 hours per week purely on document chasing
• The solicitor spends 3-5 hours per week re-reading email threads to figure out what's missing
• Matters take 2-3 weeks longer than they should to reach exchange
• Clients complain about "no communication" — the firm got a Legal Ombudsman warning last year
• An average of 1.5 matters per month hit a last-minute delay because something was missed

The firm's owner, Sarah, put it plainly: "I didn't train for six years to spend my afternoons chasing clients for bank statements."

What Foundry does

Foundry sits on a Mac Studio in the office — the same kind of computer you'd see on a designer's desk. It's quiet, doesn't need a server room, and plugs into a normal power socket.

Here's what Sarah's team set up:

A document intake desk that works like a checklist, not a robot.

When documents arrive — by email, upload, or the firm's case management system — Foundry reads them. Not to give legal advice. Not to approve anything. Just to answer one question: is this matter's document pack complete?

For each document, Foundry:

1. Identifies what it is — "This is a TA6 property information form" or "This is a bank statement covering March-May 2026"
2. Checks it's the right document for this matter — "This TA6 is for 12 Harbour View, which matches the matter address"
3. Extracts key information — client name, property address, dates, amounts, signatures present or missing
4. Flags problems — "The TA6 has three unanswered questions in section 4" or "The passport expired in February" or "The declared gift amount is £25,000 but no donor letter has been received"
5. Updates the matter readiness checklist — showing exactly what's received, what's missing, and what needs attention

Crucially, Foundry does not:

• Give legal advice
• Decide whether source of funds is acceptable
• Approve, reject, or pass any compliance check
• Send anything to clients or third parties
• Replace the case management system

Every output is a draft for a human to review. Every action requires a person to say "yes, send that."

What it looks like day to day

Monday morning, 8:45 AM

Sarah opens the matter dashboard. Three matters need attention:

• Matter 2418 (buyer-side purchase, 14 Harbour View): All documents received except the management pack. Foundry has drafted a chase email to the freeholder's managing agent. Sarah reads it, approves it, and it sends.
• Matter 2423 (seller-side sale, 7 Marina Court): Foundry flagged that the TA6 form has unanswered questions in Section 4 (alterations) and the signature on the TA10 is missing. The admin assistant calls the client to walk through the gaps. Five-minute conversation instead of three days of back-and-forth emails.
• Matter 2431 (remortgage, 22 Oak Lane): Source of funds evidence is incomplete. The client declared a £15,000 gift from their father, but no donor letter or donor ID has been received. Foundry has drafted two emails — one to the client explaining what's needed, one to the donor with instructions. Sarah approves both.

Total time: 12 minutes.

Previously, getting to the same point would have taken Sarah and the admin assistant 2-3 hours of reading through email chains, checking the matter file, and identifying the gaps manually.

The numbers

Financial impact:

• 14-18 hours of professional time freed per week
• At £150-250/hour charge-out rate, that's £2,100-4,500/week of recovered capacity
• 2-3 weeks faster completion means 2-3 more matters per month per fee earner
• Annual capacity increase: £100,000-150,000 in additional billable work, without hiring

Foundry cost: £999 setup + £99/month = £2,187 first year. Existing Mac Studio, no new hardware.

What stayed cloud

• Email delivery still uses the firm's existing email provider
• The case management system (LEAP/Hoowla) is untouched — Foundry reads from and exports to it
• Bank checks and AML screening still go through Thirdfort or SmartSearch
• Land Registry portal access is still via the existing service

Foundry doesn't replace anything. It sits beside the existing systems, handling the document triage that nobody's tools were doing well.

What it doesn't do

• Does not give legal advice. It reads documents and flags gaps. The solicitor decides what to do.
• Does not approve or reject matters. It surfaces information. The human decides.
• Does not check AML or pass source-of-funds. It assembles evidence and highlights missing items. Existing AML tools still do the actual compliance checks.
• Does not send anything without human approval. Every email, every checklist update, every client communication is a draft until a person says "send."

What the team says

"The first week it was running, it caught a missing donor letter on a £30,000 gifted deposit that we wouldn't have spotted for another two weeks. That alone justified the setup cost." Sarah, firm owner

"I used to start every Monday dreading the email backlog. Now I look at the dashboard, see what needs me, and I'm done in twenty minutes. The rest of the morning is actual legal work." James, licensed conveyancer

"Clients have stopped calling to ask 'what's happening.' They get the chase emails automatically, they know what's outstanding, and the communication complaints have basically stopped." Admin assistant

Is this right for your firm?

This setup works for:

• Residential conveyancing firms with 2-20 fee earners
• Licensed conveyancer practices handling 30+ active matters
• Firms that want to reduce document-chasing overhead without replacing their case management system
• Practices with data confidentiality requirements (SRA, CLC, ICO)

Not a fit if you:

• Only do commercial conveyancing (different document set)
• Want a full case management replacement
• Need automated AML pass/fail decisions
• Don't have or can't accommodate a Mac Studio on-site

← Back to all case studies | Next: Client Support →