Will-writing must be regulated, say official investigators

14 July 2011

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has released the results of its ten-month investigation into will-writing by unqualified persons.

The panel was so horrified by its findings that it issued a statement insisting that will-writing services must be properly regulated without further ado.

Part of the investigation was a "mystery shopping" exercise in which researchers went to will-writers as clients, and then passed the resulting products to expert assessors. One in every five of these wills were judged by the assessors as not good enough - and wills prepared by high street solicitors were just as likely to be unsatisfactory as those from lay will-writers.

The panel's chairwoman Dianne Hayter said she was "shocked" by the poor quality of wills in the mystery shopping survey -  although it has to be added that most people were happy with the service they got from will-writers.

The investigation also examined evidence provided by members of the public, the industry and professional associations. These included STEP, which submitted a case study of a will advertised for GBP23 but ended up costing far more. The will-writer responsible refused to leave the clients' house after the first meeting until they had paid GBP800 by credit card - a practice more usually adopted by double glazing salespeople than by will-writers. Moreover, the drafts sent were not as per the clients' instructions.

Another horror story came from the Institute of Professional Willwriters, which hopes to become a regulator of will-writing services if the Legal Services Board accepts the panel's recommendations. The IPW cited the case of a firm that had claimed to store clients' wills at the national wills depository at Somerset House. Strictly speaking, this wasn't true: the wills were in fact stored in a barn in rural Somerset, where they had to be rescued when the firm went bust.

The Consumer Panel's report also calls for training standards for solicitors to be improved, in view of the variable of quality of wills they produced. perhaps because of that observation, the panel does not recommend that will-writing should be reserved to the legal profession. But it demands that all will-writers should have to demonstrate they are competent to do the work. They should also be compelled to follow a code of conduct, with complaints about malpractice being referred to the Legal Ombudsman.

The report also saw evidence of sharp sales practices. "There is evidence that a rogue minority is pressuring people to buy services they do not need and charging excessive prices", said Hayter. "We call on the Office of Fair Trading to coordinate enforcement action with trading standards against these firms."

"STEP has been saying for years that cowboy will-writers are causing serious, and sometimes irreparable, harm to the public", said STEP chief executive David Harvey. "Now that our own observations are supported by this independent research, we hope that these rogue operators will be brought under control as quickly as possible."

The Legal Services Board received the panel's advice at a meeting yesterday (13 July) and will decide its next steps in due course.

Sources

STEP Summary on “Cowboy” Will Writers

Legal Services Consumer Panel  (report, PDF)

Law Gazette

Institute of Professional Willwriters

Guardian

IFA Online