Andrew East & Kevin Martin speak with Certainty Pt 2
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Certainty regularly meet senior legal professionals to discuss the ongoing developments of the register . Kevin Martin, Chairman of Certainty and Andrew East, Chairman STEP UK Probate & Estates Committee recently expressed the following views…
2. Q. Do you think that the legal profession publicise the selling of a will correctly. I’ll give you an example, we have been writing a synopsis for founder members on the website. From a marketing point of view I notice we write very little substance behind it - just you should make a will. There is very little detail about the pain of not making a will. Do you think there is a greater objective here for solicitors to highlight why you should make a will?
A: (Kevin) I’m sure there is scope for improvement. Solicitors are much more tuned in to the idea of marketing now than they were say 10yrs ago – some of them do it extremely well, some of them don’t do it at all, and there are lots in between. So I think, yes, the simple answer is that there is plenty of scope for improvement, you can never get to the ‘point of perfection’, as it were. Some firms don’t want to market, they feel its not necessary to do so and the work will come in, but increasingly firms do feel they should do so. I don’t think there’s a lot to be said for doing it on the cheap and doing it yourself, best to get advice and really promote the services you can offer and why they are necessary
(Andrew) I think there is a great deal of scope for improvement by solicitors, I think that’s true. I think there has been a sea change over the years. Traditionally if your solicitor told you that you needed a will, you had a will. These days people are far more questioning and far more likely to say ‘why do I need a will?’. Therefore as Kevin has said a lot more solicitors are in tune with this, or are getting in tune with the fact that perhaps we should sell more the disasters that can happen if you don’t make a will. The simple selling point which I often use is that even if you don’t want to do anything different to the intestacy rules, having a will means your executor can start work straight away, you don’t have to wait for the grant, and you can be certain that the property will go to precisely the people who you want it to go to. But from a simple administrative point of view it is easier to administer a will than an intestacy, so even if you want to do the same thing as the intestacy rules there are arguments that say do it in a will because that’s a lot simpler.
