Private Client

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.

The wills, trust and probate market could be worth over £3bn by 2027, new research has found, with “stronger demand” for powers of attorney and contentious probate.

Private client lawyers are divided over whether the rule that marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes a will should be scrapped as a way to combat ‘predatory marriages’.

MPs have launched an inquiry into probate in the wake of mounting concern about how long the process is taking, with HM Courts & Tribunals Service admitting to rising levels of complaints.

A solicitor who practised unauthorised and handled reserved probate work for a company owned by her non-solicitor son after her firm closed has been suspended for three months.