Private Client

Solicitor and other probate practitioners will have to apply online for grants of probate or letters of administration, under government proposals published today.

The summer 2020 edition of Entitlement, Title Research’s quarterly news digest, is now available for legal professionals to download completely free of charge.

The government is to legalise the remote witnessing of wills for two years, backdating the change to 31 January this year to reassure those who have already done it during the pandemic.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives has called for a permanent law change after the Land Registry began accepting copies of lasting powers of attorney certified by CILEx lawyers.

Online will-writer Farewill has raised £20m as it targets a major expansion in revenue, staff numbers and new services, including powers of attorney.

There is no doubt that contentious probate work is growing. We do not like paying more than a couple of hundred pounds for a will, but then are seemingly happy to spend thousands taking our relatives to court, and the two do not sit happily together.

A firm of financial advisers has launched an alternative business structure to provide its clients with legal services which it claims are faster and “at least a third cheaper”.

Employment and commercial work are seeing the biggest increases in demand from clients, research has found. However, lockdown has had a “devastating impact” on other practice areas.

A man who lost his pension after investing in self-storage pods with disastrous results was not the client of the law firm who advised on it, a judge has held.

An employment tribunal has expressed its “incredulity” at the way a solicitor’s former secretary befriended one of his clients and ended up in the client’s will.