For conveyancers & property solicitors

The ID's arrived. It's the wrong ID.

Obtainr chases your clients and the other side for the documents a transaction needs — from your own mailbox, in your name — and reads every reply against your requirements before it tells you the file's ready.

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The problem, in the vocabulary of the job

You know precisely where the file is. It's waiting on the same handful of things it always waits on:

Certified photo ID and proof of address that actually satisfy your AML checks
Proof and source of funds — bank statements covering the right period, not a screenshot of a balance
The TA6 returned with the sections left blank actually filled in
The TA10 fittings and contents form nobody thinks matters until exchange
A mortgage offer the client has, has read, and has not sent you
Search results, and the enquiries that come out of them
On leasehold: the LPE1, the management pack, and the freeholder who answers on their own timetable

Every one of those is one email away from being solved, and every one of them costs days because that email has to be written by a person who is already doing six other things. A file that stalls a fortnight on a certified copy isn't a legal problem. It's an admin problem with a legal invoice attached.

And the worst version isn't silence. It's the reply that looks like progress. The client sends a document. Someone marks the task done. Nobody opens the attachment until Thursday, and it's a provisional licence with the address peeling off.

The other side's solicitor will never log into your portal

This is the whole argument for doing it by email. Your own client will, grudgingly, use a portal. The people your file actually waits on won't — and you have no leverage over any of them.

The other side's fee earner

Has their own case management system and no intention of adopting yours. Replies to email from a named solicitor, as they have for thirty years.

The freeholder's managing agent

Answers on their own timetable through whatever channel they already use. Will not register anywhere to help your leasehold matter along.

The lender and the broker

Their systems, their processes, their client. Email is the only common denominator you both already have.

The client's accountant

Needed for source of funds on a self-employed buyer. Works for the client, not for you, and has their own deadlines.

What Obtainr does about it

You describe the chase in the words you'd use to a trainee. “Get certified ID and three months' statements from the buyer.” Obtainr comes back with questions — certified by whom, which three months, what address you're matching — until the requirements are unambiguous. That list is the standard it holds the reply to.

It sends from your mailbox. Gmail or Outlook, connected once with OAuth. The email goes from your address on your usual thread, and replies come back to your inbox where you'd expect them. To the client, it's you. To the other side's fee earner, it's you. Nothing is relayed through a third-party sending domain.

The client gets a link and a QR code. No account, no login, no portal registration, no password reset at 9pm. Most people photograph the QR code and send a picture of the document from their phone, which is the only workflow a first-time buyer will reliably complete. The link dies when the chase completes or after 30 days.

Then it reads what came back. Against your requirements, item by item. Two statements out of three, and it says so — and drafts the next chase asking for the third, on the same thread, in the same tone, up to your turn limit. The file closes when the requirements are met, not when the inbox pings.

How you'd actually run it

Fully automatic

For the routine collection every matter needs: ID, proof of address, source of funds, the TA6 and TA10 going out to a seller.

Hold for approval

When you're chasing the other side, when there's a chain deadline in play, or when the client is fragile and the wording matters. Every message waits for your yes.

Draft-only

If you want the typing done and every send made by a human. Some firms will start here on principle and never move. That's legitimate, and the price is the same.

Turn limit is yours, ten by default — so a chase can't send a client eleven emails because something went sideways.

Where it stops, plainly

Where it stops, plainly. Obtainr is reply-driven. When a reply arrives it reads it and, if your requirements aren't met, sends the next chase. It does not yet follow up on a timer against total silence — if someone never responds at all, the chase waits and you make the call. That's a real limitation and it's on the roadmap. Everything else it doesn't do.

We'd rather you knew that on day one than discovered it on a completion deadline. What Obtainr takes off you is the reading, the deciding and the re-asking, which is where files actually lose their days.

Honest numbers

11chases completed in production

11 of 11ended with every requirement satisfied

17documents received via the upload portal

Small numbers, and real ones. There are no client logos on this page because we haven't earned any yet — here's the full data set.

Obtainr is used for the same problem elsewhere

The document changes. The shape doesn't: you need something from a person who doesn't work for you, and no portal will make them log in.

Cost, against the thing it's replacing

£49 per user per month, with 100 chases included. Billed to the firm, not the fee earner.

That works out at about 50p a chase. A fee earner spending twenty minutes a day writing reminders costs considerably more than that, and a file that exchanges a week earlier is worth more again.