Property law

I found this whilst browsing a website run by the lawbitches (3Ls in the US). Apparently the kid shot his real estate finance text book. One of the co-authors made a crack about his scholarship being riddled with holes which did make me chuckle. The article got me wondering what real estate finance is.

In the UK real estate is Property. Over here you do property in your undergraduate classes (or on the CPE) and learn all about bona fide purchasers for value without notice (and a mere eight years later you stun your friends with your ability to remember a phrase you've not used since ... um ... finishing the exam in June '99). Then on the LPC course, where you learn all about the varying degrees of durability of the different types of post-it notes, you study property again. Not the letter of the law again, but how to sell or buy a residence; on a course called Conveyancing. That does involve some level of "finance" in that you have to work out how much SDLT would be payable on a residence and how much your client needs to remit to your [firm's/ Swiss numbered] bank account, which is harder than it sounds but probably wouldn't merit an entire course to itself, and certainly not an entire book!

I have been dabbling in property law recently. I have come to the conclusion that in practice property law and property lawyers are a very distinct breed.

Generally they are perceived as working the shortest hours of any specialism, except on corporate transactions when they are sometimes required to work past 6pm (ok, maybe tax lawyers work short hours too but they are usually kept in a secure unit away from the rest of the lawyers, and certainly a long way from the clients). Their offices sport the occasional pile of documents (nothing odd there TBH), some clearly old and crumbly and emitting odours more suited to a damp library. I know most lawyers probably don't work in a paperless environment, but even a badly organised non-property lawyer is unlikely to have gently rotting paper on her desk.*

Apart from having shorter days and less fire-proof offices than those flashy corporate types, they also have different working practices. Property lawyers I know exchange letters rather than email. They'll send hard copies of documents by post or DX to the Other Side, who will write all over the document and SEND IT BACK for the originator of the document to organise the typing up! When I asked for word documents by email it was as if I'd said women should have the vote or something. When do these guys live? Surely I wasn't the first person to ask for word documents by email? I suppose it does make some sense to have the document controlled by one person, and the idea of scrawling all over a document and putting it in an envelope does sound fantastically easy. I just don't think I can afford to work at such a slow pace.

So, in a nutshell - property law can be quite painfully archaic. As soon as they get rid of Unregistered Land the better. Apart from that - the hours, the ability to just scribble all over a document and then post it back to the sender, and the possibility that you might be required to colour in a plot on a Land Registry plan in a fetching shade of red* - I think I'm envious.

* facts may be slightly exaggerated to suit my purpose