Little food, little sleep but lots of drive

9am: Lydia Chen’s day was beginning in a manner familiar to many conveyancers: with coffee and a minor crisis.

The crisis: the downstairs café’s coffee grinder was broken. Only chai, hot chocolate or juice. We found another place for our caffeine fix.

That was Lydia’s first sustenance of the day. She doesn’t eat breakfast or lunch, maybe just a snack.

“It’s not for my weight,” she explained. “If I have rice or noodles even in the morning, it makes me quite sleepy. I want to keep myself fresh, sharp. The coffee will do.”

9.30am: We’re back in her fifth-floor office overlooking Chatswood’s Railway Street. It’s sparsely furnished, almost clinical: a place for work, not lounging. Wall clocks show the time in Sydney, London, Seoul and Beijing.

It’s wrong to suggest her days begin at 9am. She starts work at home from 5am after getting to bed after midnight.

“Four hours sleep is enough,” she said. “I don’t need an alarm, I wake at 5am automatically.”

Emails come first but she doesn’t reply in the wee small hours as that might suggest poor time management.

She fires them off from say, 5.06am, “because that makes me look better!”

10am: We meet her colleagues: Sophie, Christina and Lynn. Lydia attacks the latest emails and returns calls, often speaking in Mandarin.

About 50 per cent of her clientele are Chinese speakers. Lydia was born on the mainland, attended university there but emigrated with her parents about 20 years ago.

She completed a Masters in Accounting at Sydney University and thought that would be her career.

But an early mentor, a Chinese criminal lawyer, saw her as a people person, not a number-cruncher.

“After the first week he said: ‘I think you should do conveyancing’. Because I like talking!”

She learned the trade at David Winning’s Your Move Conveyancing (also Chatswood-based), gained her diploma at Macquarie Uni and started her business a couple of years ago.

10am: Lydia doesn’t just love talking but also reading: 1000-page contracts, on two big desktop monitors. “I want bigger ones!”

“People ask, does reading a thousand pages make you sleepy? I say no! Reading a contract keeps me awake.”

She tested AI to read contracts but “I don’t like it. I must personalise the client’s needs in my contract reviews and AI can’t do it”.

Lydia might, however, use ChatGPT to take a photo of an old, ornate but almost unreadable document and translate it into modern text.

Her trusted software is triConvey. “It’s very efficient. Especially for accounting, to monitor the trust fund, and very good for AML.”

11am:  We tear her away for photos, but the mobile remains at hand and incoming calls take priority.

“If you call me at home around 8, 9pm, I don’t think you are annoying,” she said. “I think you definitely need my help.”

She has two boys, aged 9 and 3. The elder wonders why she’s always on the phone (“I’m helping people”) and he pays attention.

“He asks: Mum, what’s an easement? What’s sewerage?”

1pm: As noted, Lydia doesn’t do lunch unless it’s business. She’s not a complete ascetic: “If friends stop by and want to go out for a glass of bubbly, I will.”

Her main meal is dinner at home, often prepared by, and shared with her in-laws.

“I choose spicy food. I like pepper, chilli and Szechuan cooking.”

Lydia’s mum lives in Chatswood, the in-laws near the Chen’s northern suburbs home.

It’s a Chinese thing, she explains. You want your family close enough to help each other but not under the same roof. It’s the chicken soup rule.

“If you live close enough to deliver hot chicken soup, say a five or 10-minute drive, that’s close enough.”

3pm: Lydia has pushed back a face-to-face meeting with clients. She’s happy to do this story but customer privacy comes first.

Brightstone especially values building trust and ongoing relationships with clients and referees.

It handles around 500 cases a year, promotes the business through social media and charges a fixed fee. Initial contract reviews are free.

AML/CTF compliance has added to cost pressures, but Lydia is loath to jack up her prices. “I don’t feel the client should be required to pay it.”

Chinese customers often need to have the new rules explained in detail, especially if there’s money coming from overseas.

“It would be the most frequent question I get, every single day,” she said.

“I tell clients not to worry; it won’t stop the transaction. You just must make true statements.”

She doesn’t view real estate on behalf of clients. That’s for agents and brokers. For Lydia it’s all about the contract.

“If you see the property, it’s personal,” she said.

“The buyer might care about the noise, the sunlight, but the contract is black and white. You accept it or you walk away.”

Her favourite part of the process? “Settlement Day.”

5pm: The staff will be thinking about going home. Lydia usually hangs in until six, which is not a bad idea given Chatswood’s traffic.

“If a client is busy at their office and they can only see me after 6 or 7… okay, I can wait,” she said.

 That might mean getting home at 9pm, the children already in bed, dinner served by the in-laws.

“I’m very grateful for their help,” she said. “Would I do the same for my kids? I don’t know.”

Ask Lydia about the work-life balance and it seems work might have the edge, although she aims to keep weekends clear for family activities.

“If it’s urgent, the kids will come first. But if it’s urgent for the client, the client comes first.”

Even if she won Lotto, she wouldn’t quit.

“I really enjoy being a conveyancer,” she said.

“Because it’s the most positive area in law: always helping the client. I get happiness, through helping.”