Call for solicitors to represent both seller and buyer

House purchasing solicitors should be allowed to represent both seller and purchaser and both lender and borrower during conveyancing transactions, a Legal Services panel has said.

It has called on the Solicitors Regulation Authority to remove the relevant conduct provisions from its new handbook and that the "general conflict" rule is sufficient to protect people.

The advisory panel was established by the Legal Services Board to offer a consumer-based focus. The panel also told the board that lawyers should be restricted by safeguards to ensure they understand their responsibilities and that they themselves ensure their clients are informed before choices are made.

Inconvenience caused by the wait for correspondence to be exchanged and the cost involved could be minimised if one solicitor is permitted to act for both parties, the panel said.

Licensed conveyancers have "long been permitted to act for both sides, apparently without any problems", the panel pointed out in its response to the board.

Using the current approach by the regulators, lawyers cannot act for both sides if a conflict of interest is identified. The advisory panel has said that removing the conduct provisions which govern this will merely give more flexibility to proceedings, as long as no conflict exists.

Clients would nevertheless have to agree to have just one solicitor acting for both sides.