Death and Taxes - an introduction

A Private Client Solicitor has two main responsibilities to his clients.

1. Ensure that their estate passes to the people they want it to (and more importantly not those they don't)

2. Ensure that they pay as little tax as possible.

So, welcome my friends to the world of death and taxes. It might not be the most awe inspiring choice of legal disciplines; no classic court room scenes of conducting a damning cross examination or playing to the public gallery by producing the shocking piece of evidence that wins the day. Rather my day is filled with the mundane and routine. Form filling, client interviews and letter writing.

I'll be using this blog in future to try and answer the question posed by some of my friends and relatives when they ask what exactly it is I do all day (not a lot at the moment as it happens), to relay the lighter side of the legal profession and more often than not simply to rant and rave about what I see as the rank injustices of the world, some of which may be real, most of which are simply perceived.

Benjamin Fraklin once remarked that there were only two certainties in life, death and taxes. I have to try and make those certainties in to a living.