Mastek : Simpler house-buying: Joint Venture for Conveyancing Portal

Reading, U.K. - 4July 2014 - The Law Society has announced a joint venture with Mastek UK Limited, a leading global IT solutions company, to deliver the Conveyancing Portal.The Conveyancing Portal is an online service that will help solicitors and licensed conveyancers save money and will speed up the house buying process for consumers.

Law Society deputy vice president Jonathan Smitherssaid: "The Portal will make it easier for conveyancing professionals to better serve the house buying public. In its first phase the system will allow professionals to better communicate with each other, clients and other parties, satisfy due diligence obligations more quickly and at lower cost and facilitate the conveyance of residential property through established protocols.

"Mastek UK Limited was chosen as our partner in a joint venture following a rigorous research, development and negotiation process. This project has the potential to transform the way conveyancing works, so it was imperative that we found a partner with a strong track record in delivering secure, reliable IT projects for high profile clients."

Mastek Limited is a multinational information technology services company with a presence in the US, Canada, UK, India and Asia-Pacific.

"Our partnership with the Law Society is an innovative approach that will empower conveyancing professionals with next-generation IT services," said Sudhakar Ram, MD and Group CEO at Mastek UK Limited. "This strategic alliance is in line with Mastek's vision of delivering transformational IT solutions that positively benefit the wider community with operational agility and significant savings in operating costs."

Benefits of the Portal include:

• Providing both small and large firms with a simple tool to help the house-buying process;
• Allowing smaller firms to use technically advanced platforms only normally available to larger more technologically enabled firms, and enable solicitors as a profession, to maintain the highest standards;
• Strengthening risk management and compliance, and therefore reducing fraud.

The Law Society and Mastek have set up a joint venture company called Legal Practice Technologies Ltd with a 60:40 ownership structure respectively. The joint venture company will launch its testing programme later this year and will be seeking a wide range of participants to test usability of the services prior to full launch.

About Mastek

A global, enterprise-level technology solutions provider, Mastek combines the strengths of a world class product company with a specialist services organisation. We utilise agile methodologies that deliver early business value and enable organisations to adapt to dynamically transforming IT environments. Our core IT services portfolio covers application development, service management and testing, maintenance, IT consulting, systems integration, mobility, data warehousing, business intelligence and analytics.

Mastek has over three decades of extensive experience specialising in government, retail, insurance and healthcare sectors. Our flexible delivery model, which blends onsite and offshore implementation, coupled with a collaborative culture makes us a trusted partner to our customers. With 19 offices in eight countries, Mastek operates across the UK, Europe, the US, Canada, Asia-Pacific and Middle East.For further information, please visit: www.mastek.co.uk

About the Law Society