Since May 2026, LEAP's New Zealand Property team has worked alongside more than 40 property firms to understand how conveyancing files actually move from instruction to settlement. Almost every firm was running the process from a checklist that sits outside the matter. LEAP Settle, a new conveyancing workflow app, brings that checklist inside LEAP and beta testing opens to LEAP firms soon.

In May 2026 LEAP established a dedicated Property Vertical for New Zealand. The brief was narrow on purpose: focus on conveyancing practitioners and make LEAP work better for the people running property transactions every day.

The approach has been to start with the firm's process rather than a product tour:

• How a matter is opened.

• How conditions are tracked. Where settlement figures are prepared.

• What still lives in Outlook, a spreadsheet or a paper file.

Those conversations have included sole practitioners, rural practices and multi-office firms with close to a hundred staff.

One theme came back more consistently than any other and it did not arrive as a feature request. It arrived as a description of how the work is already being done.

Every firm had already built its conveyancing process somewhere. Very few had built it where the matter lives.

01 | The checklist

What firms are running conveyancing on today

Once enough of them have been seen side by side, the tools are remarkably consistent.

A two-tab Excel tracker. A printed sheet stapled to the physical file. A shared Outlook Tasks folder. A whiteboard on the office wall. A colour-coded shared calendar. A Word document emailed between conveyancers and quietly amended by each of them. In some firms, a separate conveyancing tool running alongside the practice management system, with the same details keyed into both.

None of this is a workaround born of inexperience. Each tool is a deliberate answer to real needs: seeing the whole transaction at once, knowing what is still outstanding, and handing a file to a colleague without losing anything in the transfer.

The cost sits around the checklist rather than in it. Because it lives outside the matter, it is only as current as the last person who updated it. It answers for one file at a time, so nobody can see across the practice. And it is usually owned by one person, which means it fails at exactly the moment it is needed most - when that person is away.

The market is adding load. The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand's August 2026 figures recorded 5,430 residential sales, down 13 per cent year on year, a median of 51 days to sell, and 32,908 properties available at month end, up 9.7 per cent. Files are staying open longer and more of them are running at once.

The operational implication is that a tracking method dependent on one person's memory is under more pressure in this market, not less.

02 | What firms told us

Real checklists and processes, not descriptions of them

The build needed to rest on something firmer than impressions, so client conversations were recorded, transcribed and worked through line by line.

Firms then shared their actual working documents, such as purchase checklists, sale checklists, rural checklists, combined checklists, live settlements trackers and trust settlement statements. From those documents and the conversations around them came 72 written requirements, each weighted by the strength of the evidence behind it.

That work did not stop at purchase and sale. One firm's refinance and subdivision checklists became lists in their own right, and LEAP Settle now carries a default list for each of the ten Conveyancing and Property matter types in LEAP.

A second firm's refinance and mortgage workflows, sent in September, opened with a step our lists did not have: initial disclosure under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003. Section 17 requires it before the contract is entered into, so it is a deadline in front of the signing appointment rather than a document to remember on the day. Both lists carry it now.

Firms did not always agree. They differed on whether every task needs its own date, whether tasks should be assigned to named people, and whether a comprehensive default list helps or overwhelms. Those disagreements were recorded as design decisions rather than smoothed over, and several of them are why the app is configurable rather than fixed.

The practical response was to build around the firm's own process, not a generic one.

03 | The build

From first conversation to working screen in under two months

The first client conversation took place in May 2026. The first working build was in front of a firm in July.

Over the following seven weeks, 13 firms reviewed it across four versions, and each version changed because of the feedback on the last. Matter setup options, the five-stage structure, the settlements pipeline and the team view were all added after firms asked for them. A conditions panel went in after one firm said the single screen they would open every morning was the one missing. Firm-editable task lists came last, after four separate firms made the same point: they wanted to start from their own list.

By August the app was running inside LEAP rather than alongside it. Twenty firms have now reviewed it on screen, and the September demonstrations have been the most useful yet, because practitioners were reacting to working software rather than an idea.

04 | One firm, one process

Consistency is the point

When every conveyancer carries a personal checklist, a firm does not have one conveyancing process. It has one for each conveyancer.

The consequences are quiet. New staff learn a colleague's method instead of the firm's, and inherit its gaps. A file handed over mid-transaction has to be reconstructed before it can be progressed. A step one conveyancer always takes and another never does stays invisible until the day it is missed.

A firm-level default workflow changes the starting point. The firm's way of running a purchase becomes the way every purchase opens, editable where a matter genuinely differs. The word firms kept using was familiarity: anyone in the property team should be able to open any file and see where it is up to.

Several firms described cover for absence as the feature that mattered most to them. Practice managers bringing on graduates made the same case from the other side, because a new starter can follow the firm's process on the file rather than learning one person's habits.

05 | The app

What LEAP Settle does

LEAP Settle is a conveyancing workflow application within LEAP. It is included in the LEAP subscription at no additional cost. It opens from the global menu for a view across the practice, and from a tab inside the matter for the file in front of you.

Five stages. Open and setup, conditions, pre-settlement, settlement day, and post-settlement and archive. Default task lists for all ten Conveyancing and Property matter types, drawn from the real firm checklists described above, with a rural overlay on purchase and sale that is switched off by default.

Matter-level setup. Options for the circumstances that change a file, such as unit title, finance, KiwiSaver, an existing mortgage to discharge, and whether the client is an offshore person for RLWT. A matter carries the steps that apply to it and not the ones that do not.

Conditions. Condition type, due date and status across every matter in the practice. Satisfied by the client and confirmed to the other side are tracked as separate states, because firms said treating them as one is where conditions get missed.

Settlements pipeline. What is settling, when, and what is still outstanding on each file. Several firms described this as the screen they would work from rather than visit.

Team view. Who is carrying what. Partners and practice managers asked for this first, mainly to allocate new instructions against actual workload.

Firm task lists. Firms build and edit their own workflow templates, with a choice of template at firm and matter level. This was the most consistent request across the review, and it is why LEAP Settle does not ship a fixed list. A smaller practice can pare the list back to the steps it actually uses.

Dashboard. Opens on what is due and what is overdue, with a direct link through to the task across matters rather than one file at a time.

Firm precedents. The question asked most in the September demonstrations was whether a firm's own precedents, not only LEAP's, can be linked to the step that produces them. That is being completed now, and the beta opens once it is in place.

06 | The limits

What the software does not do

No workflow decides whether a condition has been satisfied, whether a title is acceptable or whether a transaction should settle. Those are legal judgements and they remain with the practitioner.

Certification under section 27 of the Land Transfer Act 2017, and the evidence held to support it under section 30, remain the certifying practitioner's responsibility. Under regulation 7(4) of the Land Transfer Regulations 2018, that evidence must be kept for ten years. A workflow can record that a step was taken. It is not the evidence behind it.

Beta also means what it says. This will be early software in the hands of real firms, and parts of it will change as those firms run live files through it. That is the purpose of the beta.

What property teams can do now

1. Write the checklist down as a firm. Collect what each conveyancer actually uses and compare them. The differences are the conversation worth having.

2. Separate universal steps from conditional ones. A step that applies to every purchase and one that applies only to a unit title are different things. Treating them alike is what makes default lists too long to use.

3. Identify the steps that depend on one person. Every firm has them. They are the ones that disappear when that person is on leave.

4. Decide who can see a file when the person running it cannot. In practice, this week, with the tools already in place.

5. Share your checklist. The checklists firms shared shaped the default task lists. Further contributions will shape what comes next.

Register for early access

The LEAP Settle beta will open to LEAP firms soon, and registrations of interest are open now. Firms that register will be the first contacted when it opens.

Places in each beta group are limited and selection is at LEAP's discretion, so registering is an expression of interest rather than a confirmed place. Every firm that registers will hear back either way.

To register, email the LEAP New Zealand Property team at property@leaplegalsoftware.co.nz with your firm name, roughly how many property matters you run each month, who in the firm would test the app, and the checklist you use today if you are willing to share it.

Firms who are not on LEAP yet, can book a personalised demonstration to see how a New Zealand conveyancing matter runs in LEAP from instruction to settlement.

Disclaimer: This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Market figures are drawn from Real Estate Institute of New Zealand data for August 2026, and statutory references from the Land Transfer Act 2017 and the Land Transfer Regulations 2018 current at the date of publication. LEAP Settle is pre-release software and its name and features are subject to change. Practitioners remain responsible for their own certifications, compliance obligations and professional judgement.