Private Client

A Surrey law firm that failed to deal with an estate it took on after merging with another practice has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Probate Service has now been issuing more grants per month than the number of applications it receives for a year, with delays now falling, new figures have shown.

There was a 28% surge in the number of applications for lasting powers of attorney last year, but the Office of the Public Guardian still managed to reduce its backlog.

A High Court judge has rectified a will after finding it was “beyond doubt” that the solicitor who drafted it “made a clerical error” in failing to implement her client’s instructions.

A solicitor who stole cash from a vulnerable client using her debit card while acting under a lasting power of attorney has been struck off.

The Probate Service needs to share more data about its performance so that lawyers can manage client expectations, the outgoing chair of the justice select committee has said.

The proportion of people using a solicitor for their will has continued to fall and is now down to 50%, five percentage points lower than in 2019, a report has found.

Justice minister Mike Freer has admitted to MPs that the government “bit off more than we could chew” with its £1.3bn court modernisation programme.

A Norwich law firm has been fined £121,000 for failing for eight years to replace client money which it had wrongly paid out to beneficiaries of an estate.

Digitising the Probate Service without modernising the rules was “an expensive mistake”, a senior solicitor has told MPs investigating delays in the service.