What the insurers publish
Conveyancing is thehighest-claiming area of practice.
Every Australian professional indemnity insurer that publishes area-of-law data puts property and conveyancing first — by number of claims and, where reported, by cost. And the cause ranked highest is not fraud or cyber. It is the reading of the file.
Figures below are drawn from published insurer reporting. Reporting years differ by state.
25% / 38%
Victoria — LPLC, 2024–25
Property and conveyancing accounted for the highest number of claims (128, or 25%) and the highest cost of claims ($25.5 million, or 38%) of any practice area.
33%
NSW — Lawcover, year to 30 June 2024
Conveyancing and property remained the largest single area of law for claims — 33% of the total. Poor communication was the leading cause of claims across all areas, at 43%.
#1 since 2002/03
Queensland — Lexon
Conveyancing has been the most frequent matter type every year since 2002/03: 29.2% of files and 30.5% of cost in 2023–24.
State by state
Same finding,
four separate insurers.
These are separate schemes with separate books, reporting in different years. They agree on the ranking.
| Jurisdiction | Insurer / scheme | Reporting year | Share by number | Share by cost | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria | LPLC | 2024–25 | 25% (128 claims) | 38% ($25.5m) | 1st by number and by cost |
| New South Wales | Lawcover | Year to 30 June 2024 | 33% of claims | Not published | 1st by number |
| Queensland | Lexon | 2023–24 | 29.2% of files | 30.5% of cost | Most frequent matter type every year since 2002/03 |
| Tasmania | Law Society of Tasmania scheme | Most recent reported | ~50% with commercial transactional work | Not published | Leading source of claims |
South Australia, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory do not publish a comparable public area-of-law breakdown. Insurer data covers solicitors and law practices; licensed conveyancers are insured separately and their claims data is not published in comparable form.
The gap, drawn
A quarter of the claims.
Nearly two fifths of the money.
In Victoria, conveyancing is not simply the most frequent source of claims — it is disproportionately the most expensive one: a quarter of the claims, but 38% of the money. In New South Wales the picture is drawn differently, because Lawcover publishes volume rather than cost — and there conveyancing and property is still the largest single area of law, at 33%, with poor communication ranked the leading cause of claims at 43%. These are the latest figures each insurer has published; there is no national register, so we show them side by side rather than blended into one number.
Victoria — LPLC, year to 30 June 2025
Share of claims — by number
128 claims in property and conveyancing, the highest of any practice area.
Share of claims — by cost
$25.5 million in property and conveyancing, the highest of any practice area.
Victoria only. Figures reproduced from the Legal Practitioners’ Liability Committee (LPLC) Annual Report 2024–25, covering claims against Victorian law practices in the year to 30 June 2025. Percentages are shares of all claims across every practice area; property and conveyancing carries 25% of the volume but 38% of the cost.
New South Wales — Lawcover, year to 30 June 2024
Share of claims — by area of law
Conveyancing and property remains the largest single area of law for claims against NSW practices.
Leading causes of claims
The two causes Lawcover ranks first and second, across all areas of law.
New South Wales only. Figures reproduced from Lawcover, Lawcovernotes Edition 36 (December 2024), covering the year ended 30 June 2024. Lawcover does not publish a cost-by-area breakdown.
A note on the data: these are the latest figures each insurer has published, not a live or national database. Australia has no single public register of professional indemnity claims, and each scheme reports on its own cycle, its own definitions and its own practice-area groupings — so the two panels above are directional and not directly comparable line for line. Provided for general information, not legal or risk-management advice.
The cause ranked first
Not fraud. Not cyber.
Failure to manage the legal issues.
LPLC ranks the three major underlying causes of claims, highest to lowest: failure to manage the legal issues, poor communication, then poor systems and processes. In its words, claims continue to arise where the practitioner “does not know the law, overlooked an issue or more commonly, did not collect enough facts to apply the right law.”
Cyber fraud and duty errors were real, and for a window they dominated the NSW picture — 30% of NSW property notifications in the year to 30 June 2022 related to surcharge purchaser duty. But both were spikes, not the base. LPLC cyber notifications and claims ran at 17 to 20 a year from 2020–21 through 2023–24, then fell to six in 2024–25.
As the episodic causes recede, what is left is the structural one: someone had to read the contract, and something in it was missed.
The recurrent failure modes insurers list
Failure to advise on restrictions on development or use
Easements, covenants and title restrictions not surfaced
Zoning and planning constraints not raised
Contamination and prior asbestos not carried through from annexed documents
Special conditions not explained — or poorly drafted
Vendor statement (s32) errors and prescribed documents not attached
Owner-builder compliance missed
Duty and tax exposure — surcharge purchaser duty, GST and margin scheme, land tax
Cooling-off rights not explained
Every line above is a check the Contract Intelligence Report performs on every contract, in the same order, with every finding traced back to the clause, search or provision it came from.
How it actually plays out
Three reported cases.
All of it was in the contract.
Patterson v Mamou (t/as De Novo Conveyancing) [2024] NSWDC 47
A licensed conveyancer was found negligent for failing to disclose to first-home buyers a special condition about unauthorised building works, and for failing to advise them they could rescind within the cooling-off period. Liability was apportioned 30% to the conveyancer and 70% to the building inspector as a concurrent wrongdoer.
What a first-pass read surfaces
A special condition referring to unauthorised works, flagged against the contract and the cooling-off window, with a timestamped record that it was raised.
Kumar v Sydney Western Realty Pty Ltd & Anor (No.2) [2021] NSWDC
A conveyancing lawyer failed to advise a buyer that a council notice annexed to the contract meant a marketed "granny flat" was an unapproved, uninhabitable garage. Damages of $101,631 were apportioned 75% to the lawyer and 25% to the agent.
What a first-pass read surfaces
A council notice inside the contract annexures, read and cross-checked against what the property was represented to be.
McLennan v Clapham [2019] ACTSC 1
A conveyancing clerk failed to raise that a property had previously contained asbestos, despite the documents annexed to the contract. The Court affirmed that a practitioner is paid not only for what they do, but for the responsibility they assume in protecting clients from loss.
What a first-pass read surfaces
A material disclosure buried in annexed documents, lifted to the front of the read rather than left to be found.
In both Patterson and Kumar the court apportioned liability across more than one professional. Patterson also underlines the weight courts place on a contemporaneous record that an issue was raised.
Where Zetld sits
A consistent first pass,
on every file, in writing.
The claims record does not describe practitioners who do not know the law. It describes volume, time pressure, and a reading task repeated from scratch on every contract — where the cost of one missed line is measured in years.
The Report does the first pass the same way every time: the contract, title and disclosure documents read against a maintained rule set, in a fixed order, with every finding cited back to its source and timestamped. The judgement stays with the conveyancer. What changes is that nothing gets to the judgement stage unread.
Consistent
The same checks, in the same order, whoever is on the file and however busy the week is.
Cited
Every finding ties back to the clause, annexure, search or provision behind it.
On the record
A timestamped artefact showing what was surfaced and when — the file note, produced automatically.
The Report is not legal advice and is not a substitute for a conveyancer’s judgement on complex or contested matters. It is an independent first-pass artefact professionals reference when giving their own advice.
Who else this touches
Liability doesn’t stop
at the conveyancer.
Buyer's agents & advocates
In Kumar, 25% of the loss was apportioned to the agent. In Patterson, 70% went to the building inspector. When something material in the contract is missed, liability spreads across everyone who touched the deal — you are a concurrent wrongdoer, not a bystander. An independent read on every contract is the record that you raised it.
Listing agents
The same items that generate claims are the items that collapse deals late: unauthorised works, asbestos notices, unapproved structures, awkward special conditions. Finding them before a buyer's conveyancer does is the difference between a renegotiation and a fall-through.
Buyers
The reported cases are ordinary purchases. First-home buyers who weren't told about unauthorised works. A buyer who paid for a granny flat that was an unapproved garage. The contract said so in both cases — nobody translated it in time.
Being precise about the data
What this research does
and does not establish.
Sources
- LPLC Annual Report 2024–25
- LPLC, Claim Free Conveyancing (Practice Risk Guide)
- College of Law, "What are the top negligence claims facing lawyers today?" (Lawcover interview)
- Lawcover, "Purchaser surcharge duty: risk management tips for solicitors"
- Lawcover, Lawcovernotes Edition 36 (December 2024) — claims statistics for the year ended 30 June 2024
- Lawcover, Lawcovernotes Edition 37 (March 2025), "Why KYC isn't just about AML/CTF"
- Lexon/QLS Annual Report 2023–24 (Queensland Parliament tabled paper)
- Law Society of Tasmania — Reflection on Claims
Case citations
Figures are reproduced from published insurer reporting for general information and are not legal or risk-management advice. Case links resolve to third-party commentary or full-text services where available.
The contract said so.
Someone had to read it.
See what a first pass looks like, or talk to us about how it fits your practice.