How smaller conveyancing firms are gaining an unexpected edge with AI

Consolidation is reshaping residential conveyancing. Larger, volume-led firms are growing their market share, transaction numbers are up and smaller firms are supposedly caught in a squeeze they can’t escape. In my role at Orbital working with firms of all shapes and sizes, I’ve actually seen that there’s a countertrend worth paying attention to.

A team of 5 to 15 conveyancers, rooted in their local area and proud of the service they offer, are generally able to move faster on technology adoption, often largely due to simpler decision making structures. So, they're able to see significant gains from technology adoption, and doing so whilst remaining highly respected in their local area.

In contrast to what many might believe in the wider market, smaller firms can in fact hold a structural advantage when it comes to adopting the right kind of AI and realising its benefits quickly.

The squeeze is real, but it’s not the full picture

According to Search Acumen’s January 2026 market tracker, the total number of active conveyancing firms has fallen by 13.7% since 2015. The number of solicitors working in the sector has also dropped by around 2,000 since September 2021, leaving just over 11,000 in practice as of early 2025. The top 20 firms now account for more than 14% of all transactions, a share that has grown steadily year on year.

On paper, these figures show a consolidation story that only ends one way; but volume and quality aren’t inherently the same thing. Firms growing fastest on transaction count often work to standardised, highly efficient models, which work well for predictable cases but can create constraints in more complex scenarios.

Smaller firms can often differentiate through local knowledge, direct relationships, and a kind of service that clients personally recommend. The question isn’t whether that model survives - it does, because demand for it is real - It’s about whether the infrastructure exists to support it at the pace the market now expects.

Where the real pressure lives

Transaction time is the top frustration across the sector, cited by 42% of conveyancers. Heavy workloads, poor stakeholder communication and regulatory complexity follow closely behind.

Training is the other pressure point that rarely makes the headlines. Residential conveyancing has a well-documented pipeline problem. Experienced fee earners are scarce, and bringing newer members of the team up to speed on the nuances of a leasehold title (the kind of knowledge that takes years to accumulate), is hard and time consuming.

This issue doesn’t go away by just hiring more people. It gets solved by giving the people you have better tools.

The AI adoption reality

Nearly 8 in 10 conveyancing firms are now using some form of AI, up from 39% just 12 months earlier, according to Landmark. The pace of that shift is remarkable, but we know that headline adoption figures can be misleading.

What I see in practice is a split. Firms of all shapes and sizes have plugged in a general-purpose AI tool and are getting inconsistent results: outputs that are generic, not grounded in the actual documents on the file, and that require as much checking as the work they were meant to replace.

Other firms, typically the ones seeing measurable gains, have made a different choice. They’ve adopted tools designed around the specific documents, checks, and outputs that residential conveyancing actually involves. The results are materially different: with fee earners spending less time on document review, newer team members operating with more confidence, and clients receiving more detailed reports in less time.

Agility is an underrated advantage

Smaller firms can move faster. There’s no IT steering group, 18-month procurement cycle or change management programme to run. A decision maker who decides that the team needs a better tool can have it in place within a week.

When asked what would have the greatest positive impact on productivity, faster transactions came out on top, cited by 39% of conveyancers, followed by smarter workload prioritisation at 33% and greater visibility of progress at 31%. The firms that act early improve their efficiency and are able to build institutional knowledge about how to get the most from the technology, which compounds over time.

I’ve watched deals come together in a matter of days once the right person in a firm has seen what the technology actually does in practice, in real cases, with their own documents. The scepticism that exists before that moment is entirely reasonable, but the shift that happens after it is usually significant.

What this looks like in action

The small firm advantage - relationships, local knowledge, responsive service - isn’t under threat from technology. A fee earner who’s not spending 45 minutes reading a lease is a fee earner who has an extra 45 minutes to speak to a client, to chase a search - to do something more meaningful.

The smaller firms I see thriving right now aren’t the ones trying to change their operating model. Instead, they’ve complimented their existing workflows by implementing highly trusted and easy to use tools, without having to worry about adding unaffordable headcount.

If this resonates and you’re curious about what the right approach might look like for your firm, I’d love to share some of our recent customer success stories with you. You can reach me at dimple.rama@orbital.tech.