Working through COVID-19

Working through COVID-19

As lockdown restrictions were eased colleagues returned to the office and we are  pleased to say that this was a successful transition after 68 days of working from home. We wanted to provide a summary of the last three months and discuss how we have adjusted and our new approach to business. Due to being an online based firm we extended our geographical reach to ensure that business levels remained as fluid as possible, this also enabled us to understand other locations where our services are well received and we remain active in these areas.

The last few months have been extremely busy and the demand for our services has increased to somewhat normal levels. All the team feel much better working within the office environment. We of course adhere to social distancing measures and each member of the team has been provided with hand sanitiser to ensure hygiene levels are maintained.

Going forward we will continue to provide outstanding service for our clients and as we look to restructure our teams we are confident that we will continue to be a positive force within the property industry.

During lockdown, our Director David Pett felt that we should continue to recognise employee's efforts, all staff members working were given an Amazon voucher to spend and we continued to select our employee of the month. It is important to say that everyone has worked extremely hard, Tia & Martin were employee of the month for April & May and Toby is June’s employee of the month, well done Toby this is well deserved!!

The first week of working alone managing New Business was at first rather daunting. I knew that I had a huge responsibility to bring in as much work as possible which at times felt like an impossible task as we were working in conditions beyond mine or anybody's control. My main goal was to manage the pipeline of business as there were still clients that had accepted offers on properties and therefore wanted to proceed with their respected sale & purchase, it was really important however that I made clear that we must adhere to government guidelines throughout the whole transaction and things were subject to change. For me, this was about striking a fine balance of a proactive approach to securing business but also having the ability to react to whatever circumstances presented themselves. On a positive note, I was able to start building relationships with third parties such as estate agents, and brokers. We have also seen some of these relationships take form as we can offer a service that is unique with our advanced cloud-based technology. We have also seen clients be more open-minded to online conveyancing which has been great as this is a testament to our way of working. I have always been of the view that people buy from people and as the housing market starts to rebuild it is nice to see clients that I had spoken to in March now choose MJP Conveyancing. Without the hard work in the early stages, I don't believe that we would have seen as many new clients onboard as we now have. One thing that I am confident about is that the service I discuss with clients is not only nationally award-winning but our team cares about our clients which to me, justifies the late nights and weekend working. We have no idea what the future holds but I am confident that we are already showing that we have adapted to the new normal.

We continue to receive 5* reviews across all platforms such as Trustpilot, Google, Review Solicitors and internally

MJP Conveyancing is an online firm which naturally made advising clients on the conveyancing process from the comfort of our own homes a lot easier. We didn’t need to take large stacks of files home with us, we simply logged on to our online portal and continued to work. In that respect, I think it is fair to say we were well prepared for COVID-19.

With that said, our workforce was significantly reduced and our clients understandably required more support and guidance than ever during the uncertain times of COVID-19. I found myself and the rest of the team working longer hours and over the weekends to maintain our excellent standard of client care which we pride ourselves on. We also had to be flexible and help out in other teams where necessary. This was challenging, and became difficult to sustain as the weeks continued to pass.

We closed our phones lines from incoming calls in order to manage our work load whilst working from home. However, we also wanted to keep our personal touch and reassure our clients that we were available on the phone if needed so we added a ‘call-back’ system. This allows clients to request a call back at a suitable time.

In conveyancing there is a saying that you can only go as fast as the other parties involved. I really felt the impact of this during lockdown. A lot of our clients wanted to progress as quickly as possible but this was not always achievable in light of government guidance or where the other parties’ solicitors or estate agents were closed, or perhaps working limited hours. Of course, this is understandable in the circumstances but given we are an online firm and were fully-functioning throughout I found it challenging to manage client’s expectations.

I feel like this experience has really brought our team closer because we had to communicate more than ever whilst working from home in order to ensure transactions continued to progress, and to support each other. We mainly communicated over Zoom and telephone, with the occasional funny picture via email to keep spirits high. Our Director David Pett was good for this.

Working from home during lockdown was tough but I truly believe that we have learnt some invaluable lessons which will improve our service moving forward with technology at the forefront.





During Covid-19 we were able to launch our premium service which as proven extremely popular.

MJP Conveyancing are solicitors who provide legal advice and services to clients based in England and Wales and who can be contacted on 01603877067 or via email at david@mjpconveyancing.com