Buying or selling - whether it’s your family home or a rental - you’ve got enough to worry about without looking through the velvet curtain to see what your legal team is up to. But you’ve probably asked yourself: what we do for our fees?

Well, on settlement of a property transaction there are 10 steps we take on your behalf and it’s because of the rules we follow as lawyers and legal executives that we’re even able to reduce it to 10:

1. After a hearty breakfast and four shots of coffee, the buyer’s team checks to ensure that the bank has done as promised and deposited the loan funds. This only happens if they have certified to the bank at least 2 days prior that everything is in order and when the money lands it can be used straight away to buy the property. 

2. The trust account is a special account where your money is held and transferred out of on settlement day.  The seller’s lawyer starts the flow of settlement off with a settlement statement which confirms what the buyer needs to pay. They also send a promise that they will immediately transfer the title to the buyer as soon as the money lands in their trust account. 

3. The buyer's lawyer then releases a series of internal memos that authorise the bank to pay funds to the seller’s lawyer’s trust account. These memos ensure that the firm is compliant with its obligations to its clients and the Law Society. Overdrawing a trust account is an absolute no-no. 

4. The buyer’s lawyer then send the funds together with their own promise that they have done everything possible to ensure that the bank releases the funds and will not undo any of that. This promise and the one at point 2 are underpinned by the fact that a lawyer can be struck off for breaking these promises. 

5. The banks then do their thing in cyberspace. 

6. The seller’s lawyer releases the title and any other instruments (such as a mortgage) to the buyer’s lawyer. 

7. The buyer’s lawyer submits these instruments and the buyer is listed as the owner (and the bank as the mortgage holder). At this point, rates information is updated as is address information for the new owners. 

8. The seller’s lawyer confirms to the agents or its client that the keys can be released and everyone moves onto the next transaction. 

9. Post settlement, you will get a trust account statement which records the flow of funds in and out of the trust account. 

10. The final step is that your bill gets paid, usually from the balance of funds that sit in the trust account and the file is closed by storing all of the important information somewhere safe for about a decade. 

Your job is to focus on not breaking the good plates and not freaking out about the fact that the above process can take a few hours (particularly as we have as many of 10 of these a day).