Carr: We can offer end-to-end service in-house
The Octopus Group, the £13bn financial services and energy business, has launched a law firm to handle probate and estate administration work, Legal Futures can reveal.
It is likely to expand into other areas of consumer legal services in the future.
Octopus Legal Services is part of Octopus Legacy, formerly known as Guardian Angel, which the group bought in 2022.
Octopus Legacy supports people with end-of-life planning – including wills and lasting powers of attorney – and its head of commercial, Chris Carr, told Legal Futures that last year it began doing estate administration too.
The part of the work that is a reserved legal activity – the grant of probate – was outsourced but setting up an alternative business structure regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority meant that Octopus could now handle this too.
Mr Carr explained: “Whilst there is a decent amount you can do to help people without the regulation… it’s not the ideal customer experience. It works but being able to offer that full, end-to-end service in-house, to make sure it’s done as we believe it should, was really, really important to us.”
This allowed for a “clean” hand-off of clients to Octopus Legal Services once the probate process began. “It’s not a small undertaking to become a law firm but for us it made sense,” he went on.
He said “a few” clients had asked about whether Octopus was regulated and “for some people it probably does provide greater reassurance”.
The firm’s head of legal is dual-qualified solicitor and Colombian lawyer Laura Puentes Gantiva, Octopus Legacy’s head of legal, while June Yap is the senior probate solicitor.
Mr Carr said there were three solicitors and one paralegal initially in the law firm but there would be “pretty continual and fast-paced hiring from now”. This would help it to start offering trusts advice this year.
“Beyond that, Octopus Group is a company that looks to support people through different life events, so there is certainly the potential for Octopus Legal to grow into other areas of consumer-facing legal services,” he continued.
Octopus Legacy is growing rapidly too; with 10 new joiners starting this month, it will have trebled in size in around a year to 57 staff.
Mr Carr said they were building an estate planning team around the country, so that will writers were able to provide estate planning services at customers’ homes as well as remotely.
One of the big advantages of Octopus was the strength of its brand – “Octopus Energy has done us a lot of favours” – and the idea was to “become the brand that people trust around planning and dealing with death, and supporting people in dealing with the most difficult moments in their lives”.
The Octopus Group’s other involvement in legal services is through its acquisition in late 2023 of a majority stake in amicable, the online divorce service that markets itself as an alternative to solicitors. Given this, it will not be part of Octopus Legal Services.
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