Can AI help us reply to pre-contract enquiries on a conveyancing matter?

Yes, for the finding and gathering, which is where most of the time goes. An AI assistant can work through the title documents, the lease, the client's completed forms and the correspondence, pull out what bears on each enquiry and tell you where the answer came from. The replies themselves are yours: a reply to an enquiry is a statement the seller and the firm stand behind, and no tool should be the one deciding what to say.

What the work actually consists of

Pre-contract enquiries are rarely difficult in isolation. They are slow because the answer to any one of them sits in a different place: a plan, a transfer, a lease schedule, a planning consent, a guarantee, a managing agent's pack, an email the client sent three weeks ago. A fee earner spends more time locating material than deciding what to say about it.

That split matters when you are deciding what to give an AI tool. The locating part is mechanical and checkable. The deciding part involves the client's instructions, your knowledge of the transaction and your professional judgement about what can properly be said.

What AI can usefully do

On a reasonably organised file, a sensible assistant can:

• Work through an enquiry set and, for each enquiry, point to the pages in the papers that bear on it.
• Pull together everything on the file about a single topic: the boundary, the alterations, the service charge history, the rights of way.
• Tell you where the papers are silent, so you know to go back to the client or the managing agent rather than reading the same bundle again.
• Compare the client's completed property information forms against the title documents and flag anything that does not sit easily together.
• Draft a neutral summary of a document the buyer's solicitor has asked about, for you to check against the document itself.
• Keep a running list of outstanding items as replies come in and new enquiries follow.

Notice that none of this is the answer. It is the material you need in front of you before you can give one.

Where the fee earner has to stay in charge

Three things should never be handed over.

First, what the seller says. A reply to an enquiry reflects the client's knowledge, not the file's contents. If the papers do not record an alteration, that is not the same as the client telling you there was none. The tool can tell you the papers are silent; only the client can tell you the position, and only you can decide how to record it.

Second, the form of words. Replies to enquiries carry consequences. Whether to answer, to refer the buyer to a document, to say the seller has no knowledge, or to decline to answer is a judgement about risk and about what the client has instructed. That is solicitor work.

Third, anything that reads as advice to the buyer. Your duty runs to your client. A drafting assistant does not know where that line sits on a particular transaction.

Keeping it honest

The failure mode to guard against is a plausible reply with nothing behind it. A tool that produces smooth text about a right of way it has partly inferred is worse than no tool, because the smoothness invites you to skip the check.

So insist on three habits.

1. Every point should name the page it came from, and you should be able to open that page in a click and read it yourself.
2. If the papers do not say, the tool should say so plainly rather than filling the gap. "The file does not record this" is a useful output. A guess is not.
3. Pages that could not be read, a poor scan of a plan, a faint copy of an old conveyance, should be flagged, not quietly passed over. On a property file the unreadable page is often the one that matters.

If a tool reaches a different view from yours on a lease clause, treat that as a prompt to read the clause, not as a second opinion. Go to the source.

A workable order of play

• Get the file in order first. Title documents, lease and schedules, the client's completed forms, consents and guarantees, the management pack, relevant correspondence. A tool is only as good as what it has been given.
• Ask for a topic-by-topic gathering against the enquiry set, with pages named.
• Read the pages that matter. Not all of them; the ones the answers turn on.
• Take instructions on anything the papers do not settle, and record those instructions on the file.
• Draft the replies yourself, or have a draft prepared and then rewrite the ones that carry risk.
• Have a qualified person review and send. Nothing goes out unread.

On a volume residential desk this can take an afternoon's gathering down to an hour, while leaving the part that needs a solicitor exactly where it was. That is the right shape for this work: faster preparation, unchanged responsibility.

Where Alesis fits

Alesis is an AI assistant for UK law firms, made by L25 Limited, used through the web browser, with one conversation for a matter. It answers questions about a matter from the matter's own papers and names the page each answer came from; if the papers do not say, it says so. Documents are read page by page, so citations point at pages, and any page it could not read is flagged rather than skipped. It prepares drafts for a qualified person to review and sign off, and it does not file, serve or email anything.