Starting out in property law can feel like there’s a lot to learn, from understanding registration requirements to navigating the tools and services you’ll use day to day.

At Registers of Scotland (RoS), we want to make that journey a little easier by helping you get register ready.

Our website has a wide range of guidance, resources and support designed to help you:

• build your knowledge
• submit applications with confidence
• find the information you need when working with Scotland’s land and property registers.

In this blog, we’ve brought together some of the key resources to bookmark as you begin your career in conveyancing and property law.

Understanding title documents

When working with a property, its title documents are an important place to start.

These include the title sheet, which provides information about:

• the property
• ownership
• securities
• burdens

Then you have the title plan, which shows the property’s extent and boundaries on a map.

The RoS website has resources to help you:

• find a property’s title number
• order title documents
• understand title plans and legal boundaries

Making it a useful reference as you build your knowledge and experience.

Find out more about title documents.

Understanding Advance Notices

As you begin working on conveyancing transactions, you’re likely to come across Advance Notices regularly.

An Advance Notice provides a 35-day period of protection for certain deeds before they are registered in the Land Register of Scotland, helping to protect the purchaser against specific risks during the registration process. Our guidance takes you through when they are required, how they work and how to apply for, or discharge one.

Find out more about Advance Notices.

Submitting a successful application

If you’re newly qualified or new to property law, getting register ready starts with understanding the one-shot rule and what it means when preparing applications for registration.

Applications need to be correct and complete when they are submitted. Errors or missing essential information can result in rejection and the application having to be amended and resubmitted with a new registration date. Taking time to understand the application requirements from the outset can help you avoid delays for both you and your clients.

Our guidance explains the general application conditions and conditions of registration, and our rejection resources highlight common reasons applications are rejected, helping you build good habits and get applications right first time.

Visit our application form guide.

Rights and burdens

For newly qualified solicitors, understanding how rights and burdens affect a property is an important part of building confidence in conveyancing.

The RoS Knowledge Base has dedicated guidance covering:

• Rights and title sheets
• Title conditions
• Encumbrances and off-register rights
• Realignment of rights
• Shared and sharing plots

It’s a useful resource to refer to when preparing applications and understanding what information may need to be reflected in the title sheet.

Indicative Sasines

Indicative Sasines can be a useful starting point when researching land and property that has not yet moved onto the land register. Available through ScotLIS, it provides a visual indication of the likely ownership and boundaries of sasine titles, helping make historic sasine information more accessible.

It’s important to remember that Indicative Sasines is not a property register and does not confirm ownership or boundaries with a hundred percent accuracy, so the relevant sasine search sheets still need to be examined to establish ownership.

Find out more about Indicative Sasines.

Our Learning Hub

You can also bookmark our Learning Hub. This is our dedicated page for students and trainees starting out in property law and conveyancing. It’s designed for every stage of your legal career.

Visit our Learning Hub.