It Was A Good Day

Today's blog isn't about law or the legal profession because quite frankly I've had enough of it this week.

Instead I shall relay the highlights of my week.

1. Buying my daughter her first pair of proper shoes

I've created a monster. Another woman obsessed with shoes (she takes after her mother!). We took the baby to John Lewis to have her feet measured and fitted for her first pair of shoes on Wednesday evening. She has started to walk round the furniture and pull herself up to a standing position on anything she can grip so we figured it was about time.

While they're not exactly ruby red slippers, they are actually pretty cute and it's one more milestone I guess. We've decided to keep them once she grows out of them and maybe give them to her on her 21st along with all the other bits and pieces we've collected over the last ten months.

     2.  Lunch with a friend and new business contact

Went for lunch with a friend who works for a large regional firm yesterday. We went to a lovely deli on Deansgate. In keeping with the new health regime I decided on a chicken salad rather than a roast pork and apple sauce ciabatta. The interesting thing about lunch was not only catching up with a good friend but she was able to introduce me to a colleague who was gave me some good great advice and food for thought on starting my own practice. The option of her coming in to any new venture as a partner was discussed so we will see how things go. At least I have a growing list of options to match the growing mound of credit card bills.

     3. One week closer to seeing my in-laws 

My wife is Iranian and since we have been together I have never met both of her parents at the same time. Her brother has learning difficulties and was unable to get a visa to visit the UK for either our wedding or my daughter's birth. This meant that my father-in-law had to stay with him and missed both occasions too. We were given the news a couple of weeks ago that he had been granted a six month multiple entry visa on appeal and that all the family were going to come over for six weeks to visit. The great news is that they will all be here for the baby's first birthday. It will be the first time that both sides of the family will have been together in one place. lus my wife hasn't seen her brother in nearly six years so it's something we're both greatly looking forward to.

So that's it for this week. Will probably take a break from the blog over the weekend. I've got a lawn to finish mowing and drinks with friends to celebrate the last weekend of freedom for an old friend before he flies out to Thailand to get married.

Next week I'll be back with a little piece about Alternative Business Structures, more on the LSB decision to probe unregulated will writing and the moves to ban referral fees.

I'll be using songs as title to my posts in future so if you know where today's title comes from then well done you! Take pride in your knowledge of early 90's West Coast rap.

4-18 Article

Today is a lazy day in terms of the blog so I have reproduced below an article I did for a regional parenting magazine called 4-18 Magazine on the importance of having a Will.

Family Misfortunes - how not having a will could lead to future problems.

Wanting to protect your children and make proper provision for your dependents is one of the most natural instincts we have. Yet by not making a valid will, or by not keeping an existing will up to date, you may be exposing the people you wish to protect and provide for most from the uncertainties of the modern world.

Modern life is complicated and so too are our personal relationships and family lives. Second and third marriages are not uncommon and with the plethora of step-relations they bring can store trouble for the future. A properly drafted will can ensure that the most vulnerable members of your family benefit from your estate and not leave you at the mercy of the intestacy rules; legislation prescribed by the government that dictate how your assets are to be divided.

As an example; imagine that Ann and Brian are married and have two children Charlotte and David. If they divorced and Ann subsequently remarried Eric who had his own child Freya we would have a not unfamiliar family unit. If Ann died before Eric and neither made a will, on Ann’s death (assuming a relatively modest estate of less than £250,000.00) all of her assets would pass to Eric. On Eric’s death, his estate, which now also includes all of Ann’s assets, would pass to his daughter, Freya. This means that Charlotte and David, even though they are Ann’s natural children, do not benefit from her estate.

A situation like this could be avoided by incorporating appropriate planning techniques within a Will. If both Ann and Eric had prepared mirror Wills that include a gift of a life interest to the surviving spouse with the remainder passing to their respective children then the double goals of ensuring that the survivor of them had access to sufficient funds for the rest of their life while ultimately providing for their own children would be achieved. 

Through the appropriate use of life time and/or post-death trusts you can protect your children’s inheritance from the unfortunate ramifications of a divorce or bankruptcy, provide money for a specific purpose such as funding for further or higher education or protect a vulnerable beneficiary that may never be able to support themselves independently.  Appropriate planning can also allow assets to “skip” a generation where the testators’ children do not need or wish for the value in their own estate to be swelled by their parents’ assets.

A will can also be used for appointing guardians for your children to ensure that should the unthinkable happen and you and your partner are no longer around, they will be looked after by the people you decide on until they reach the age of eighteen. Nominating guardians at an early stage in a Will can help avoid potentially ugly disputes between surviving or competing family members who may be struggling to come to terms with bereavement.

Too many people, young and old, do not have a will and by extension are not safeguarding their own future financial safety or that of their families. By engaging the expertise of a skilled professional and a little forward planning you can enjoy watching your family grow; happy in the knowledge that you have, to the best of your ability, provided for them whatever life may throw at them.

Fate and Destiny

Was it chance or destiny? Was it predetermined or a cruel twist of circumstance that lead me to qualify in to the legal profession at the particular time that I have?

I find myself trying to make a living in a time that is arguably worse than any other. 

The collapse of the housing market and the credit crunch lead to a large number of conveyancing firms (and firms in general) closing their doors. No lending meant that there were no first time buyers. No first time buyers lead to the whole market stagnating as no one was able to move "up the ladder".

True, there were still quality clients to be found but even investor clients able to buy in cash were put off by the volatility of property prices and sensibly shied away until the market looked to be bottoming out.

This was not good news for a newly qualified solicitor such as I who spent half of his training contract doing residential conveyancing work.

The second piece of dumb luck was the fact that many conveyancing specialists who found themselves redundant retrained in to private client work. This was partly co-ordinated by the Law Society who rather than push for an end of one firm acting for both a lender and borrower in a purchase which would have saved a number of firms sought to attract more solicitors in to the relatively unscathed practice area of Wills and Probate; and partly because Private Client practice was a neat fit for many conveyancers due to the fact that usually any contentious business would be handled by the firms' civil litigation department. So if you were not of a litigious persuasion Wills and Probate was the area for the you.

The flood of new Private Client solicitors on to the market meant that for me my second (and preferred) area of practice was now so diluted that any NQ jobs were very few and far between and when they did come up competition was often fierce with recruiters quite rightly being brutal with applicants.

It's a topic of conversation that comes up quite often after a few drinks with my lawyer friends. We all feel that we got in to the profession at the wrong time. Five years earlier and we would be making a decent living as we would have circa seven years post qualification experience and would, in some cases, be looking at the prospect of partnership either at an established firm or our own new start up. 

Five years later and knowing what we know of the future of the legal market (ABS, Jackson review implementation, increased PII costs, calls for a ban on referral fees) it's no exaggeration to say that at least three quarters of my immediate peers would think long and hard about a career in law.

However, having invested so much time; five years at university, two years working as a paralegal gaining experience, two years as a trainee and now (almost) two years as a qualified solicitor - energy and money in to my chosen career path this is the hand that fate has dealt me and I'm not looking to fold my cards just yet. 

New Beginnings

I've rather neglected this blog after my initial flurry (if you can call two blogs a flurry) of activity. Things got a little crazy for a while as the firm I was working for merged with a more established firm and I was busy trying to build a network of referrers as well as turn the ancient and festering pile of estates they had in to billable work and hence profits - not an easy task at a firm where things have just been allowed to coast for the last five or six years.

Things appeared to be going quite well for the first say, four days, however it quickly became apparent that far from the "loads of work" that had been promised there was nothing of the sort. Rather there were a small handful of probate cases that had been ongoing for at least two years, some of which had already been the subject of client complaints to the Legal Services Commission (as it was then).

There was a distinct lack of work in progress and no real intention of doing anything about marketing ourselves to get new clients through the door.

On top of this it was soon discovered that the junior partner was in receipt of secret profits on Personal Injury cases. He was receiving a commission from the preferred medical agency for each case referred to them. This would not be a problem in itself had these commissions been first declared and offered to the client and not instead squirrelled away in to a separate limited company. The same company which incidentally also hired vehicles to clients who required replacement vehicles while their own damaged cars were repaired or valued and replaced. Somewhat more disturbingly, during the course of an investigation conducted by myself and another partner, it was discovered that the sole equity partner was a member of the hire company and had allowed the whole shady practice to develop unfettered.

I felt the only course of action available was to resign and report the matter to the SRA for their consideration.

As such, I now find myself without a job for the second time in less than a year and seriously considering my future within the profession for the first time since I was at high school.

I have options and a growing list of referrers and other work sources but the choice is a stark one:-

1. Take the financial risk of setting up something of my own (with others) and watch it either grow in to something beautiful and profitable or wither and die within six months;

2. Get a proper job and become a wage slave for someone else, whether that be within the legal profession or not;

3. A mixture of the two - take my referrers to someone else and work under their umbrella for a share of the profits on work brought in

For the time being I have re-registered with the usual suspects in terms of recruitment agencies and approached friends and former colleagues for their suggestions and input. We shall see what turns up.

In the meantime I'll be updating this blog more regularly and already have ideas as to what my next few topics will be.

So for now let us raise a glass to the future and look forward to new beginnings while hoping the past is a fading memory from which lessons can be learned.

Where there's a Will... there may be trouble.

Towards the middle of last year a team from BBC 1's Panorama produced a documentary detailing evidence they had uncovered that catalogued horror stories provided by members of the public who had Wills drafted by Will Writing companies.

The Panorama investigation went on to reveal a growing problem of consumers being contacted by unregulated and unqualified will writers offering services that are often advertised at a large discount on the normal fees charged by a solicitor for a similar job.

The growth in non-solicitor will writing is due to the fact that, unlike probate work (more particularly the preparation of an Oath for Probate or Letters of Administration) and other work usually associated with a solicitor such as conveyancing, will writing is not a regulated activity. Therefore you do not have to be a member of a particular regulated body to set up practice as a will writer.

With an estimated 60 - 75% of the adult population without an up to date will there is a potentially huge market for anyone with access to the internet and a printer to make a decent living.

So where's the problem?

This may appear to be sour grapes from a Private Client Solicitor who is seeing someone else muscle in on his patch, charging a much lower rate than he is able to justify but an unregulated will writing sector is a danger to both the legal profession and society at large.

A solicitor will (in most cases) have received thorough training both in terms of taking proper instructions and in terms of drafting an end product that is suitable to the client's needs. A solicitor will also as a requirement of their practising certificate be required to undertake 16 hours of continuing professional training a year in order to keep themselves up to date with recent changes in law.

An unregulated will writer has no requirement for any initial training nor any continuing training and as such may not be able to advise clients as to subtle but potentially devastating changes in law. The will writer may not be able to spot other potential problems when taking instructions. For example a will writer with no broader legal training may not advise a client going through a divorce that unless a clean break settlement is reached there may be potential for the former spouse to make a claim on their estate if the client was to predecease them, courtesy of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975.

If a solicitor makes a mistake in drafting or does not follow instructions through correctly then the client has a course of redress through the Solicitors Regulation Authority and ultimately, if the client (or their beneficiaries or intended beneficiaries) suffer a financial loss then compensation can be gained through a claim against the solicitor's professional indemnity insurance. As members of a professional body solicitors must adhere to a strict code of conduct and have adequate indemnity insurance in place. For example my firm has both an internal complaints procedure together with carrying PII with a limit of indemnity running in to £3,000,000.00.

In the unfortunate circumstances where a will writer has drafted a will and something goes wrong there is no current requirement for a will writer to have any kind of complaints procedure or be backed with any PII insurance.

Using a solicitor over an unregulated will writer should be a no brainer. Regrettably many consumers will be lured in with the promises of a product being offered at bargain basement prices without realising that either they or their loved ones may be paying a higher price in the future.

I have not intended this piece to be a bashing of non-solicitor will writers in general. There are a number of good organisations out there providing a quality service. However, in the main such providers will belong to one of the several will writers bodies such as the Institute of Professional Will Writers who enforce a code of conduct and require their members to carry appropriate levels of PII. For this reason I back the calls by the Law Society, the IPWW and STEP (http://bit.ly/hvBJJS) for will writing to become a restricted activity that can only be done on a professional basis  by a member of a recognised and regulated body.

It is my personal belief that such a move would create parity between will writers and solicitors and provide consumers with a degree of comfort in knowing that the person they have entrusted with safe guarding their family's future is at least trained to a minimum standard and armed with up to date knowledge.

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.