The first appointed Legal Ombudsman warns that companies offering unregulated will-writing services are ripping off thousands of people.
Adam Sampson, the Chief Ombudsman for England and Wales says in his first report that some of the most complaints he’s received were about family law, will-writing and conveyancing: ”One service which crops up a lot is will-writing. It’s a service carried out often by will-writing firms who aren’t regulated, because of this, customers are left with little means of redress when things go wrong.”
He continues: “We’ve seen similar confusion about claims management companies, with lots of consumers believing they’re getting a legal service even though most of the work is carried out by a non-authorised person. Again, we can’t help.”
He has called upon the government to implement some action that will ensure that people are not taken advantage of by service providers who are not regulated.
As thing currently stand, only a small percentage of legal services need to be carried out by a qualified lawyer, this means that services such as divorce, employment, immigration and will-writing can be provided by unqualified and unregulated companies.
Currently, one in five wills written in the UK is legally incorrect, sadly most of these mis-written wills don’t come to light until it’s too late. Many are poorly written or have exorbitant executor fees. Badly written wills can lead to family disputes and misunderstandings of the will-writers intentions, some legal errors could even leave family members to be disinherited.
At the moment anyone can operate as a will-writer, and we are seeing stalls setting up in shopping malls promising a quick and easy service. Quite often though, these companies will use their own names as executor of the estate and charge extremely high fees once the will maker has died.
Adam Sampson was appointed as Legal Ombudsman in October 2010, but he can only act on complaints that he receives from customers that have experienced bad service from qualified solicitors.
Both the Law Society and the consumer organisation Which? Have back Mr Sampson, calling for regulations to be put into place to protect consumers, citing that grouping together legal and financial services put customers at risk and left them unprotected.
Executive Director of Which?, Richard Lloyd said: “As the legal-services market continues to grow in both size and complexity, it’s crucial that consumers who have paid for a legal service that’s not up to scratch know where to turn to get help.
“We want the government and regulators to wake up to the current lack of clarity and to provide a clear and straightforward route of redress for consumers.
“The arrival of a legal-services market in which consumers will, potentially, have complaints about hybrid services poses some serious questions about who they’ll be able to turn to for help.”
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