Posted: Monday 9 January 2012
Trainee experience: Property Law both sides of the border
By Helen McHugh
As someone who always enjoys new challenges, I have greatly appreciated the varied experience I have had so far as a trainee in the property finance section of the Corporate Banking team.
Working for some of our banking clients, I have:
- Drafted and reviewed many deeds which banks with mortgages over a property are required to consent to, for example planning agreements and deeds of servitude dealing with access and related rights for electricity companies.
- Drafted standard securities (mortgages).
- Drafted and revised commercial property documents for a bank’s own property portfolio such as rent review agreements, licences for works and even a lease.
- Dealt with registration of different deeds at Registers of Scotland .
- Dealt with the registration of documents at Companies House -- in particular I will always remember personally delivering a document to Companies House for registration at around 4:30pm on the 21st and final day available for registration!
However, what I have found even more interesting and challenging is having the chance to do work relating to both Scottish and English property law, and beginning to appreciate just how widely property law varies between these two jurisdictions.
As the differences were first explained to me by a partner at Morton Fraser, if a purchaser does something in a Scottish property transaction then it is likely that the seller does this in an English property transaction and vice versa. However, I have since discovered that the differences go much further and that you cannot make any assumptions about English property based on what you know about Scottish property law! The two jurisdictions have for example different methods of signing and completing documents, different land registration systems, different required property searches, and they use different terminology for their respective property transactions.
Prior to starting my traineeship at Morton Fraser, I didn’t expect to be doing anything related to English legal work but I have enjoyed this introduction to English property law, and have gained an appreciation of the differing terminology which could be beneficial for the future. I have recently discovered that I will be spending the next seat of my traineeship in the Agricultural & Rural Property team and I am sure that the experience and knowledge I have gained so far will stand me in good stead for doing rural property work both sides of the border, and could prove very useful should I decide to pursue dual qualification in Scottish and English law in the future.
