Conveyancing Month!

 

 

  CONTENTS

 

Time to buy Adobe...

 

 The UK’s first monthly on-line journal dedicated to conveyancers!

 

TechnoFile...

 Over the next 12 months, and as they gear up for HIPS and Land Registry’s e-conveyancing roll out, many practitioners will be investing considerable sums of money in their IT infrastructures. Maximising your return on investment (ROI) will entail  getting a real handle on electronic service delivery, and the creation and management of .pdf files will be critical to a successful outcome.

Because electronic documents are created by a variety of applications, they come in all shapes and sizes. The trick for the e-conveyancer is to get all the files - documents, emails, pictures, web pages etc - into one file, that can be viewed by launching one application. The HIP, for instance, will need to be turned into just such a file.

 

Security will be another factor, and practitioners will want to ensure that, as far as possible, the recipient of   any document sent electronically will not be able to tamper with it.

The solution is to turn all the files into one .pdf file, and the pre-eminent application for doing so is Adobe Professional V.7.

 

The binder function in Adobe enables users to combine documents from many different applications into a single .pdf that can be used throughout the entire course of the transaction.

Acrobat 7 provides users with a password protection feature that enables you to decide who may have access to the documents contained within the .pdf. Additionally, you can prevent recipients from editing the file, and you can even prevent them from printing it off.

Digital signatures or certificates can be appended, so you can ensure that the file has come from a reliable source, and hasn’t been modified.

 

Adobe V7 now comes with excellent teamworking features, which enable a group of people - team leader, fee earner and secretary, for instance -to work on a single file at the same time. Everyone involved can add comments by adding electronic sticky notes or highlighter pens. This collaborative approach is likely to prove invaluable when assembling HIPs and other title or contractual documents during the course of a transaction, and means that documents can easily be submitted for approval before being released.