Private Client

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

A probate manager who took £634,000 from estates while working at two law firms has been jailed for four years after pleading guilty to charges of fraud by abuse of position and money laundering.

Probate delays have left some clients feeling suicidal because they are running out of money, the head of a leading probate provider has told MPs on the justice select committee.

A City law firm has failed to strike out a £1.3m negligence claim arising from a discretionary trust it set up for a man described by a High Court judge as “serially let down” by the profession.

Law firms are suffering a backlash from clients, and increasing unbillable time, as a result of the continuing delays at the Probate Service, the Law Society has said.

The top official at the Ministry of Justice has refused to say whether criminal law solicitors will get their recommended 15% pay rise, in heated exchanges before the justice select committee.

A solicitor who submitted two lasting powers of attorney to the Office of the Public Guardian showing she had witnessed the donor’s signatures – when she had not – has been struck off.

The legal services market will continue to grow in 2024, hitting a turnover of £50bn with a “resilient” corporate law sector boosted by “stronger economic conditions” later in the year.

The Right Legal Group, a wills and probate specialist, has secured private equity funding to buy at least “a dozen law firms a year”, it has emerged.

The pandemic measure to allow video witnessing of wills came to an end last week, after the government decided not to extend it beyond 31 January.

A solicitor has been jailed for two years after admitting abusing her position to steal tens of thousands of pounds from two vulnerable people, one of whom was her father.

A daughter seeking to propound a copy of her deceased mother’s will has been “let down” by her solicitors in failing to comply with an unless order to issue proceedings, the High Court has ruled.

Complex probate cases should be outsourced to law firms to cut the backlog of cases at the Probate Service, expert practitioners have recommended.

A salaried partner who told clients to pay him in cash or with cheques made out to him, which he kept, has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Delays at the Probate Service are shortening in the wake of a “distinct improvement in recruitment, competency, productivity and call handling”, the government said this week.