Front-Loading the Contract Pack: Why Contract Pack Vault by Landmark Should Be in Every Conveyancer's Workflow

The average property transaction in England and Wales now takes 123 days from instruction to completion. That's over 17 weeks. A process that, on paper, should take roughly 60 days stretches to four months or more; and the single biggest contributor to that gap is the enquiry stage.

Data from Landmark Information Group shows that the average time from enquiries being raised to replies being received has increased by 100%; from 26 days in 2007 to 52 days in 2024. The conveyancing process hasn't become more complex. The information flow has become more broken.

Contract Pack Vault, launched by Landmark Information Group in October 2025 as part of Project 28 (the industry charter for faster, more certain property transactions), is the most credible solution to this problem. And every conveyancing solicitor in the country should be using it.

The archaic enquiry cycle

Here's how the current system works in most firms.

The seller's conveyancer prepares a contract pack; title documents, property information forms, fixtures and fittings, leases, guarantees, planning consents. In practice, sellers provide as little as possible, disclose only what's explicitly asked for, and wait. The buyer's conveyancer receives the pack, reviews it, identifies gaps, and raises enquiries. The seller's conveyancer sends the enquiries to the seller. The seller responds. The buyer's conveyancer reviews the responses, identifies further gaps, and raises additional enquiries. Repeat.

This cycle; raise, wait, respond, raise again; is where weeks of delay accumulate. It's not driven by legal complexity. It's driven by incomplete, inaccurate, or missing information at the outset. And it's entirely avoidable.

61% of conveyancers surveyed by Landmark believe that earlier data insights would reduce the number of enquiries raised. They're right. The problem isn't the enquiries themselves; it's that they're necessary because the information wasn't there from the start.

What Contract Pack Vault does

Contract Pack Vault is a secure platform that enables conveyancers acting for sellers to prepare and share contract packs in a standardised, streamlined way. The key innovation is AI-powered validation: when documents are uploaded into the vault, the system scans them for completeness and accuracy before the pack is shared with the buyer's conveyancer.

This means the buyer's conveyancer receives a contract pack that has already been checked for gaps; not one that they have to interrogate, chase, and supplement over a period of weeks. The pack is shared securely through the platform, and all stakeholders in the transaction have access to the same, validated information from the outset.

The effect is to compress the enquiry stage dramatically. Instead of a 52-day back-and-forth, the buyer's conveyancer receives a complete, validated pack and can raise only genuinely necessary enquiries; not the ones that exist solely because something was missing.

Why this matters for every firm

The benefits aren't just about speed; although speed is the most visible outcome. Front-loading the contract pack changes the economics of a conveyancing matter:

Fewer unnecessary enquiries. When the pack is complete from the start, enquiries are targeted and meaningful rather than speculative and voluminous. This reduces the time your fee earners spend drafting, chasing, and responding to correspondence that shouldn't need to exist.

Shorter transaction timelines. Compressing the enquiry stage has a direct effect on the overall timeline. If the enquiry cycle drops from 52 days to, say, 20, the entire transaction moves faster. Clients are happier. Chains hold together more reliably. Referral partners; estate agents, mortgage brokers; see fewer fall-throughs.

Better risk management. When information is complete and validated at the outset, the risk of a late-stage issue derailing the transaction drops significantly. The "surprise" that emerges three weeks before completion; an undisclosed restriction, a missing planning consent, an unregistered extension; is far less likely when the pack has been AI-validated from the start.

Competitive differentiation. Firms that can demonstrably complete transactions faster attract more work. In a market where transaction speed is a primary client concern, the ability to say "we front-load every contract pack using Contract Pack Vault" is a genuine differentiator.

The old model is broken: and everyone knows it

The practice of sellers disclosing the bare minimum and waiting for enquiries to be raised before providing further information isn't a strategy; it's a habit. It developed in a paper-based era when assembling a complete contract pack was genuinely laborious, and it has persisted long past the point where technology made it unnecessary.

The industry has been talking about front-loading information for years. The Conveyancing Association, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, and the Law Society's Conveyancing Quality Scheme have all advocated for earlier, more complete disclosure. Project 28; the charter for faster, more certain property transactions, which Landmark is actively supporting through Contract Pack Vault; represents the most concrete industry-wide push to make front-loading the standard rather than the exception.

The tools now exist. The data supports the case. The only question is how quickly firms adopt them.

OrdoLux: The first case management system to integrate Contract Pack Vault

We're proud that OrdoLux is the first case management system to integrate Contract Pack Vault directly into the matter workspace.

What this means in practice: when a conveyancer sets up a matter in OrdoLux, the Property Vault tab lets them push all the property data they've already entered; address, title details, parties, transaction type; straight into Contract Pack Vault to create the vault. They can then upload the contract pack documents from within OrdoLux, so everything is already sitting in CPV ready to review. No re-keying, no duplicate data entry, no switching between systems just to get the vault populated.

You'll still use the Contract Pack Vault interface to review and validate the pack before sharing; that's the whole point of CPV's AI validation. But OrdoLux removes the friction of getting there. Instead of manually re-entering property details in a separate platform and uploading documents one by one, the vault is pre-populated with your matter data and your documents are uploaded directly from the matter file. What's left is the part that actually matters: reviewing the validated pack and sharing it with the buyer's conveyancer.

For sellers' conveyancers, this means creating the vault and uploading the contract pack without re-keying a single field. For buyers' conveyancers, it means receiving a complete, AI-validated pack and raising only the enquiries that genuinely need answering. For everyone, it means a shorter, more certain transaction.

The future of conveyancing is front-loaded

The firms that thrive in the coming years will be the ones that embrace front-loading; not as a nice-to-have, but as the default way they work. Contract Pack Vault is the tool that makes it possible. OrdoLux is the platform that removes the friction of getting there.

If you're a conveyancing solicitor and you're not using Contract Pack Vault yet, now is the time. And if you're looking for a case management system that brings it directly into your workflow, we'd love to show you what OrdoLux can do.

---

Contract Pack Vault is a product of Landmark Information Group, part of the Daily Mail and General Trust group. OrdoLux is an independent case management platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Landmark Information Group. Contract Pack Vault integration in OrdoLux is available to all conveyancing firms with an active Landmark CPV subscription.

Data sources: Landmark Information Group Property Transaction Report 2025; Legal Futures (October 2025); Today's Conveyancer (October 2025). Statistics cited are from publicly available sources and have not been independently verified by OrdoLux.