Conveyancer or Solicitor: What Each Can Legally Do, and When You Must Switch

On this page

1. Conveyancer or solicitor, the short answer
2. Who is legally allowed to do your conveyancing
3. The non contentious rule, and what it costs you
4. If the money goes missing, the two funds are not the same
5. How to check the firm before you instruct
6. So which one should you choose
7. Frequently asked questions

Conveyancer or solicitor, the short answer

Two quotes are open on your screen. One comes from a firm of solicitors, one from a licensed conveyancer, and the conveyancer's is the cheaper of the two. In England and Wales you can use either. Both are authorised to do the legal work on a sale or a purchase, and both regulated practices have to carry professional indemnity insurance. The difference that counts turns up when a deal goes wrong. A CLC practice may only do non-contentious work, so once a court application starts to look likely it has to stop acting and hand your file on. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the choice is narrower. In Northern Ireland, the normal route is a solicitor with a Northern Ireland practising certificate.

So the useful version of this question isn't "which one is cheaper". It's two questions wearing one coat: how likely is this deal to turn into a fight, and who am I even allowed to hire where I live? Answer those and the price question mostly answers itself. Duck them and you can lose time in the middle of a chain and pay a second firm to revisit work you've already bought once.

The one difference that can force a switch

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers puts the rule on its own website, in a note at the foot of the page that lists what it regulates. "CLC Practices may only provide non-contentious work. A service is treated as contentious when it becomes likely that an application will be made to court, and at that stage a CLC Practice must cease acting."

Read that trigger carefully. It isn't a court claim landing on the doormat. It isn't even an argument. The bar is that an application to court has become likely. A seller who refuses to complete after exchange could get you there if court action becomes likely.

A solicitors' firm doesn't hit that wall. The Solicitors Regulation Authority authorises solicitors for five of the six reserved legal activities under the Legal Services Act 2007, and conducting litigation is one of them. That particular rule doesn't force the file to move.

Who is legally allowed to do your conveyancing

This isn't a matter of taste, and that's the good news. All three UK legal systems reserve core parts of conveyancing, and all three attach a criminal offence to doing that work for other people without the right authorisation. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the offence turns on whether there was a fee, gain or reward. That's why the list of people you may instruct is short, and why you should check the register before you choose. GOV.UK is clear that you can do your own conveyancing if you want to. What the law bites on is somebody else doing it for you when they aren't authorised to.

Northern Ireland is worth a second look. The government's own register says the 1976 Order limits the conveyancing process to solicitors holding practising certificates. There's no licensed-conveyancer equivalent to go looking for.

England and Wales, three common routes

The three kinds of firm below can take your file on their own authority. Solicitors, regulated by the SRA. Licensed conveyancers, regulated by the CLC. And CILEX Practitioners, regulated by CILEx Regulation, who may practise without supervision inside a regulated firm and hold the title CILEX Conveyancing Practitioner when conveyancing is their scope.

A Chartered Legal Executive is a different animal, and the register says so plainly: reserved legal work is done under the supervision of an authorised person. Plenty of them are excellent, and one may well run your file day to day. They just aren't the firm you instruct.

The teeth behind all this sit in section 14 of the Legal Services Act 2007. Carrying on a reserved legal activity without being entitled to is an offence, and on conviction on indictment it carries up to two years, a fine, or both. If you're weighing up property firms across England, start by confirming which authorisation the firm holds.

Scotland, solicitors and a second register

Scots law comes at it from the other end. Section 32 of the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980 makes it an offence for an unqualified person to draw or prepare, for a fee, gain or reward, a writ relating to heritable or moveable estate. Your disposition falls within that rule; the Act expressly excludes a missive from "writ". So a solicitor is the ordinary answer, and the Law Society of Scotland is the sole regulator of Scottish solicitors.

There's a second door, and it's easy to miss. Section 32(2A)(a) lifts the offence for a conveyancing practitioner doing conveyancing services as the 1990 Act defines them. Those people sit on a register that the Council of the Law Society of Scotland has to keep, and section 17 says it's open to anyone to inspect, free of charge. We couldn't get into that register from here, so we won't guess at how many names it holds. Ring the Law Society of Scotland and ask them to confirm an entry before you instruct.

One more thing for Scottish readers. The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025 is on the books but not yet fully switched on, and it rewrites parts of both Acts. Expect this ground to move. Meanwhile you can browse Scottish firms by city and start comparing.

Northern Ireland, the solicitor route

Article 23 of the Solicitors (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 does the same job with a shorter guest list. An unqualified person who draws or prepares an instrument of transfer or charge for Land Registration Act purposes, or lodges a document for registration in the Land Registry or the Registry of Deeds, commits an offence unless they can prove no fee, gain or reward was involved.

The exceptions include barristers, certificated notaries public, public officers, engrossers, patent agents, agents dealing with notices to quit and letting adverts, and people acting under the direction and supervision of an eligible employer, a partner of their employer or a fellow employee. There's no independent conveyancer category in it. So for an ordinary house move in Northern Ireland, the route is a solicitor with a Northern Ireland practising certificate. The Law Society of Northern Ireland runs a public Find a Solicitor search that filters by town and by area of law, and residential conveyancing is one of the areas you can pick. You can also compare solicitors in Northern Ireland by city.

The non contentious rule, and what it costs you

Back to the rule that can decide the whole question. If a CLC practice has to stop and your file moves, a cheaper quote can lose its advantage. It can also happen when you can least afford a delay.

What counts as contentious

Not an argument. Not a testy email from the other side's firm. The line is whether an application to court has become likely, which is earlier than most people picture. A seller who refuses to complete after exchange. A boundary the neighbour starts to claim. A right of way that turns from a mutter into a demand. A lease extension where the landlord and the leaseholder stop agreeing on the premium.

None of that means anyone is going to court. It means going to court is now on the table, and that's the trigger the CLC wrote down. A firm holding both conveyancing and litigation authorisations doesn't reach that moment on this rule, because it has nothing to hand over.

What a switch mid transaction actually means

This is survivable. Your file moves to a new firm. That firm sends a fresh client-care letter, runs its own identity and anti-money-laundering checks on you, requests the file from the old firm, and reads itself in. None of that is exotic.

What it can cost you is time, at a bad moment. Your buyer's mortgage offer has an expiry date, and the chain above and below you has its own arrangements. You may also pay twice for part of the work, because the new firm has to satisfy itself about points the old one had already settled.

This part is genuinely unfair, and you're right to be annoyed by it. The rule protects you from a practice acting outside what it's licensed to do, and it can still leave you with extra cost. The way to manage it is to price the risk before you instruct, not after.

If the money goes missing, the two funds are not the same

Now the panic question. Your deposit is sitting in a firm's client account and something has gone badly wrong. Professional indemnity insurance covers many negligence losses. Each regulator also runs a discretionary compensation fund for losses that meet its own rules. The two funds cover different losses on different clocks.

Money is one problem. Poor service is another, and it goes to the Legal Ombudsman rather than to a fund. Residential conveyancing drove almost three quarters of the rise in complaints the Ombudsman accepted in 2025/26. If that's your issue, here's how a complaint about a legal firm actually works.

What each fund covers, and what it does not

The SRA fund pays where your loss comes directly from the dishonesty of someone it regulates, a failure to account for money, or a civil liability that should have been insured when it wasn't. Straight negligence by a firm whose insurance is in place is an insurance claim instead. The SRA is also blunt about one limit: it can't pay for distress and inconvenience.

The CLC fund names negligence in its own list, alongside dishonesty, fraud and failure to account. That's a real difference on paper, and it comes wrapped in the same discretion. The CLC calls it a fund of last resort and says it may make you chase your money by every other route first, including insurance and court.

One live thing worth knowing if you bought a hotel room or a student flat. The CLC has ring-fenced claims about investment property transactions into a single pool, closed to new applications since the end of 2024, and it's assessing them as a group so any payments can be shared out fairly. It expects most decisions by the end of 2026 and all of them by spring 2027.

The clock starts the day you find out

Both windows run from discovery, not from completion. A loss you only spot two years later isn't automatically dead.

The SRA gives you 12 months from when you first knew, or reasonably should have known, of your loss, and it may extend that where there's reason to. The CLC wants your application within six months of discovering you may have a claim. Six months isn't long. Neither fund owes you a penny either way, because both are discretionary by design. The deadline is the one part of this you fully control.

How to check the firm before you instruct

Everything above turns into five checks to make before any money moves. Do them in this order. The first one settles legal authorisation.

1. Search the register for your nation, by firm name and by the name of the person who'll actually run your file, and check the entry shows a live authorisation rather than a lapsed one.
2. Ask which regulator the firm answers to, and get the licence or SRA number written into the client-care letter. A number in a website footer proves nothing.
3. Ask whether the firm is on your lender's panel, naming your lender out loud, before you pay a penny.
4. Ask what happens if the matter becomes contentious: can this firm carry on acting, and if it can't, who pays for the handover?
5. Get the quote itemised into legal fee, VAT and disbursements, and ask what's excluded. The CLC tells buyers to check whether searches, Land Registry fees and Stamp Duty are in the price, and warns that leasehold and Help to Buy purchases can carry extra costs.

Search the right register for your nation

In England and Wales, the SRA's Solicitors Register searches by person or by firm, and it also lists firms the SRA has closed down and people it has banned from practising. The CLC runs Find a CLC Lawyer, searchable by individual, by practice or by postcode, and being listed on it is a regulatory requirement rather than a marketing choice. CILEx Regulation holds the register for CILEX Practitioners. In Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland covers solicitors and conveyancing practitioners both. In Northern Ireland, it's the Law Society of Northern Ireland's Find a Solicitor.

A firm's own website isn't a register. Nor is a comparison site, ours included: we build our lists from open data, and you can read how we do it, but the regulator's entry is the only thing that settles the question.

Ask about the lender panel before anything else

If you're buying with a mortgage, this question outranks the fee. Many lenders will only instruct firms on their own conveyancing panel, so the answer for the firm in front of you can't be read off its job title. It's a question about that firm and your lender, not about the two professions.

Ask it early, name your lender, and find out what a no costs you. That's the whole check, and it takes one phone call. Ask it before you pay anything or the lender needs separate representation.

Red flag: no regulator named and no licence or SRA number anywhere in the paperwork. A request to send completion money to a personal account, or to a "new" account notified by email. Pressure to instruct today to hold a price. A quote well below every other quote with nothing itemised. An unwillingness to say who will actually handle your file. The response is the same to all five: stop, ring the firm on the number from the register rather than the number in the email, and confirm before any money moves.

So which one should you choose

We'll take a position, because laying both sides out and walking away isn't much use to anyone holding two quotes. For most English and Welsh transactions, a licensed conveyancer is a perfectly good choice and the profession has nothing to apologise for. It can be the wrong choice when a dispute is already in view or likely to emerge, and that is worth asking about before you instruct.

A licensed conveyancer usually fits when

Your purchase or sale is the ordinary kind. Freehold or a straightforward leasehold, a title that's registered and boring, a chain that's behaving, no dispute anywhere in view. Price and communication are what you're really choosing between.

You can't predict the price from the label alone. Quotes can include a legal fee, VAT and disbursements, and transaction details can change the total. Compare two itemised quotes line by line before you choose.

A solicitor earns the extra when

Anything already contested. Anything tangled up with a divorce, a probate or a business. An unregistered title. A short lease or a lease extension. Any transaction where you can see a fight coming from here. Northern Ireland by default, where the normal route is a solicitor. Scotland in practice too, unless you've checked a conveyancing practitioner's entry yourself.

One caution, because "get a solicitor" isn't the whole check. A high-street firm that does a few conveyances a year between wills and family work isn't automatically safer than a high-volume specialist. Ask how much residential conveyancing the firm does, and who supervises it. If you want a starting shortlist, our directory of conveyancing and property solicitors is built for exactly that question.

This is general guidance, not advice on your own transaction. If there's already a dispute in your sale, get advice on your own facts before you instruct anyone.

So: check the register for your nation tonight, make the lender-panel call tomorrow, and ask both firms on your shortlist the contentious-work question in the same email. Three tasks, one evening. Then pick on price and on how quickly somebody rang you back, which is what you wanted to do in the first place.

Frequently asked questions

Is a licensed conveyancer the same as a solicitor?

No. They're two different professions, each with its own regulator. A licensed conveyancer is regulated by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and authorised for conveyancing services. A solicitor is regulated by the SRA and authorised for five of the six reserved legal activities, litigation included. On a normal purchase both do the same job. The gap only opens when a dispute appears.

Can I use a conveyancer instead of a solicitor?

In England and Wales, yes. A licensed conveyancer is independently authorised to do the legal work on a sale or a purchase, and the government's own guide on selling a home lists licensed conveyancers alongside solicitors. In Scotland the counterpart is a registered conveyancing practitioner. In Northern Ireland there is no licensed-conveyancer equivalent, so the normal route is a solicitor with a Northern Ireland practising certificate.

Are licensed conveyancers accepted by mortgage lenders?

Some are and some aren't, and it's settled firm by firm rather than by profession. The job title on the letterhead doesn't answer it. Put the question to the firm directly, naming your lender, before you pay anything, and ask what it will cost you if the answer is no.

Is a conveyancer cheaper than a solicitor?

You can't tell from the title alone. Compare the legal fee, VAT and disbursements on each itemised quote for the same transaction.

Can any solicitor do conveyancing?

A practising solicitor in England and Wales is authorised for reserved instrument activities, but that doesn't make every firm equally experienced. A firm doing a handful of conveyances a year isn't the same proposition as one doing hundreds. Ask how much residential conveyancing the firm handles and who supervises the file.

Do I need a Scottish solicitor to buy a house in Scotland?

You need someone Scots law recognises, which in practice means a Scottish solicitor or a registered conveyancing practitioner. Authorisation in England and Wales doesn't travel: the Legal Services Act's reserved activities are drawn for the law of England and Wales, and Scotland runs its own offence and its own regulator. If an English firm offers to handle it, ask which of its people is Scottish-qualified.

What happens if my conveyancer goes bust?

The regulator may intervene. If it closes the practice, it can take control of client money, and the CLC asks affected clients to contact it directly. Professional indemnity insurance covers many negligence losses; a discretionary compensation fund may cover qualifying losses. Apply early: the CLC asks for an application within six months of discovering you may have a claim, while the SRA gives 12 months from when you knew, or reasonably should have known, of your loss and may extend that period for good reason.