The Legal Ombudsman in England has warned that dissatisfied consumers of will-writing services are often left with no recourse, because the regulatory framework is confused and uncertain.
The Ombudsman's office was launched in October last year to adjudicate complaints against lawyers. According to its first report, released this week, within six months it had received 38,000 complaints from the public about poor quality service. As a result of these reports, the office launched 4,000 investigations, of which 1,450 have been resolved.
Adam Sampson, head of the Legal Ombudsman's office, said most lawyers provided a reasonable service or were willing to rectify their mistakes. "But some of the stories we hear are shocking", he said.
A particular problem, he noted, was that people are not sure which legal services are regulated and which are not - especially will-writing, which in England is not.
"Because of this, customers are left with little means of redress when things go wrong", said Sampson. His office cannot help if the will is written by a non-regulated person - which may be the case even if the customer thought he was dealing with a law firm.
His report tells one horror story about a man who went to a high street solicitor to have his will written. The firm's partner introduced him to someone in an adjoining office whom he was told would provide the service. But when the will proved defective, the law firm denied responsibility because the man in the adjoining office worked for a different, unregulated company. The Ombudsman is enforcing its ruling against the law firm anyway, but the case highlights the limits of a system where classes of individuals, rather than activities, are regulated.
Sampson's report also notes that the legal services market is changing rapidly with liberalisation. In future, legal and financial services will be increasingly bundled together, often delivered via the Internet. Sampson warns that such companies may well be unregulated yet masquerade as traditional law firms "branded with more legal wigs and gowns than you can shake a quill pen at".
This, he says, presents consumers with serious dangers and requires "urgent action" to protect them, because of the risk of overlap and confusion between regulatory systems.
The Legal Services Board is currently developing a strategy for putting regulation of will-writing on a firm basis. It is supported by STEP, which considers that will writing for a fee must be regulated to protect consumers, though it should not be restricted to solicitors.
"We have always believed that will writers should have appropriate qualifications, and they should also have proper indemnity insurance", said STEP chief executive David Harvey. "Improving regulatory structures will raise standards across the marketplace."
• Separately, Saga has released research suggesting that large numbers of people are overcharged for probate services, because some firms charge 5 per cent of the estate value without being challenged.
