Lawyers (and even those in the know about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) may be surprised to learn that the property sector has its very own version of the babel fish – and it even has a fishy connotation. PISCES is the data exchange standard.

PISCES stands for Property Information Systems Common Exchange Standard (version 1.6). It is the free data exchange standard which allows different participants in the property industry to transmit and receive property-related data in a standard format.

PISCES is a set of data exchange rules which allow the sender to package up electronically-held data in a format that the recipient can understand and unpackage. The end result is that the recipient of information in a PISCES file can unpackage information and reuse it without manual transcription of data, saving time and money. For example, a lawyer could send a lease report electronically to a surveyor who could automatically digest the report into his management system without retyping all the data.