Conveyancing that runs on the transaction, not the file.
UK residential conveyancing is a two-firm, multi-party, deadline-dense process glued together by email, post, and phone. Recensus reads the contract pack, surfaces what is blocked or expiring today, and turns the parts firms actually control into structured work — so a fee earner running 80 files acts on the seven that matter.
The document-intelligence core is available today on the local-first workbench: contract-pack and title review, cited extraction, repeatable tabular reviews, Report-on-Title and enquiry drafting. The process and inter-firm layers below describe where the practice pack is heading.
The pains this removes.
Every one of these is a structural friction in the work today. The practice pack turns each into something the workbench handles for you.
Zero client visibility and the "what's happening?" update-call tax.
A permissioned client portal answers the status question, so 25–35% of the day spent on inbound chasing is handed back to fee-earning.
Chain opacity — nobody can see the readiness of every link.
A shared, coarse-grained chain view replaces the blind five-firm telephone relay over exchange dates.
Unstructured enquiries travelling as free-text Word documents.
Enquiries become structured threads with per-question state, owners, and evidence — and still render to a numbered Word schedule for off-platform firms.
Identity proven four times to four different standards.
ID verified once to the HMLR digital-identity (Safe Harbour) standard and shared, with consent, across the parties.
External bottlenecks with no SLA — searches, LPE1 packs, HMLR requisitions.
Early ordering, auto-filed results, and an automated chase cadence on the one lever firms actually have.
Payment fraud — intercepted emails swap bank details before money moves.
Verified, in-platform account details and Confirmation-of-Payee mean bank details are never sent by email.
Silent post-completion rot — the leading source of negligence claims.
A dedicated cross-matter queue tracks SDLT, AP1, requisitions, DS1 undertakings, and leasehold notices against their clocks.
Deadline tetris across 80 live files managed by diary and memory.
Every artefact carries a clock; a "Today" view surfaces only what is blocked, expiring, or overdue.
Better for everyone in the matter.
The work touches many people. Each one gets a surface built around what they actually need to do.
Conveyancer (fee earner)
The core workspace, organised around exceptions and deadlines rather than 80 checklists.
- A "Today" exceptions rail: no movement in 7 days, search expiring, offer expiring before exchange, SDLT due, priority period running down.
- Title and pack intelligence that parses official copies and flags tenure, restrictions, covenants, easements, charges and notices.
- The enquiries manager — structured Q&A with status, owners, due-chase dates, and AI-drafted replies from the pack.
- Exchange-readiness scorecard answering "can this exchange?" at a glance.
Buyer & seller (client portal)
Kills the update call, compresses onboarding from weeks to days, and makes the client feel safe.
- A plain-English "pizza-tracker" showing the current stage, what is blocking, and who holds the ball.
- Smart TA6/TA7/TA10 web forms with conditional logic — answered once, output as structured data plus a signed PDF.
- Source-of-funds via open banking, with the gifted-deposit donor onboarded the moment a gift is declared.
- Verified, in-platform payments and a live completion-day view.
Estate agent (sales progression)
The chasing engine of the market gets a real pipeline instead of weekly ring-rounds.
- A sales-progression dashboard with a fall-through risk score per transaction.
- Digital memorandum-of-sale intake that auto-creates and pre-populates both firms.
- The shared chain view with consent-based, coarse-grained link readiness.
- Completion-day key-release authorisation with an auditable confirmation.
Supervisor / compliance
Firm-wide oversight built for CQS, the SRA Accounts Rules, and MLR inspection.
- An AML dashboard: matter risk assessments, EDD escalations, and screening hits, inspection-ready.
- A firm-wide undertakings register — given and received, by age and discharge status.
- Breach alerts on client-account anomalies, missed SDLT, priority at risk, and expired ID&V.
- Throughput analytics: days per stage, enquiry rounds per counterparty, search turnaround by council.
Lender & broker
Read-only progress that kills the chase call and ingests the offer into the matter.
- A broker view with offer-expiry warnings and outstanding-document visibility.
- Mortgage-offer ingestion: parse the PDF so special conditions become checklist items and the expiry clock starts.
- Lender flows: COT submission, advance scheduling, and post-completion charge-registered confirmation.
- Lender Handbook Part 2 requirements rendered as per-matter checklist items.
Managing agent / freeholder
The forgotten party and chronic bottleneck gets a structured fulfilment surface.
- An LPE1/LPE2 request-and-fulfilment portal with document slots and in-flow fee payment.
- Pack status visible to both conveyancers, with versioning when answers change.
- Tracked post-completion notices of transfer/charge and certificate-of-compliance issuance.
- Building Safety Act artefacts stored against the building, reusable across flats in the block.
Everything in the practice pack.
The complete surface, from the document-intelligence core available today to the wider platform vision.
Contract-pack & title review
- Parse official copies and the title register.
- Flag tenure, restrictions, covenants, easements, charges and notices.
- Contract-pack completeness checking on receipt ("pack missing EPC; TA6 unsigned").
- Cited extraction: every claim linked to its source document and page.
Repeatable tabular reviews
- Rows are pack documents, columns are your checks.
- Pack-completeness and official-copies risk scan.
- Lease review and TA6 anomaly scan.
- Search-result summariser, every cell with reasoning and citations.
Lease review
- Term and ground-rent escalation.
- Service charge and alterations / consents.
- Building Safety Act artefacts (certificates, EWS1).
- Lender minimum-lease-term conflicts surfaced.
Search-result summariser
- LLC1 / CON29 (and CON29O).
- CON29DW drainage & water.
- Environmental and flood risk.
- Mining (CON29M and regional).
Drafting & generation
- Report on Title generator — merges extracted facts and enquiry outcomes into the plain-English client report.
- Enquiries drafted as structured threads that render to numbered Word schedules.
- Tracked-change AI suggestions on DOCX with accept / reject.
- A negligence-grade, immutable audit trail of every version and decision.
Clocks & exceptions rail
- A "Today" view of what is blocked or expiring — not 80 checklists.
- SDLT-14d, OS1 priority period, offer and search expiry.
- Per-direction staleness (waiting-on-us vs waiting-on-them).
- One-click, matter-aware templated chases with history.
Stage checklists
- Auto-generated per transaction type.
- Purchase, sale and remortgage variants.
- Freehold and leasehold flows.
- Versioned firm-level content, not code.
Compliance & AML
- ID&V to the HMLR digital-identity standard.
- Source-of-funds, gifted-deposit and donor sub-flows.
- PEP / sanctions screening.
- Firm-wide undertakings register.
Ledger & anti-fraud
- Client / office-account postings aligned to the SRA Accounts Rules.
- Verified-payee records.
- Confirmation-of-Payee on outbound details.
- No bank details by email — ever.
The shared Transaction
- The transaction — not one firm's file — is the unit of value.
- A shared deal room when both firms are on-platform.
- The chain view and completion choreography.
- Graceful degradation to generated artefacts at n=1.
Trust features
- Verified payment rails as a reason to switch.
- Identity done once to the HMLR standard and passported.
- A client portal and an estate-agent chain view.
- Consent-based, coarse-grained sharing by design.
Integrations
- Search providers and aggregators.
- HMLR Business Gateway (official copies, OS1, e-DRS AP1).
- Digital identity (NFC + liveness).
- Open banking and Confirmation-of-Payee for payments.
Why it's built this way.
The unit of value is the shared transaction.
Every incumbent models one firm's matter. Two firms, an agent, a lender, and two clients orbit one property sale — model the shared transaction with permissioned views and every status question answers itself.
Exception-driven, not list-driven.
A fee earner running 80 files needs the seven things blocked, expiring, or rotting today — not 80 checklists. Deadlines are the spine of the data model; the dashboard is a priority queue over clocks and stalls.
Trust features are adoption features.
Verified payment details, ID done once to the Safe-Harbour standard and shared, and a no-bank-details-by-email guarantee are headline reasons for a small firm to switch — fraud is existential, not a compliance chore.