Private Client

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.

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.