In it for the long haul!

One of the things I love about my job is the opportunity it has given me to develop long term relationships with a wide variety of people.

This morning I had coffee with a fabulous woman who I first met when she was 12 years old and I was helping her mother set up her own business. Both the 12 year old and the mother’s business have blossomed in ways that I’ve been delighted to watch and support, and now I’m helping the former 12 year old make her own way in life.

I helped her with her first contract dispute.

I helped her buy her first property.

And now I’m helping her and her partner prepare wills, which might sound like a slightly depressing subject, but seeing as she’s due to give birth to their first child in a few months, is obviously for a very happy reason.

One of the reasons why I love having these long term relationships is that we can build mutual trust and confidence, which means that the young lady in question felt able to answer me very direct questions (knowing that I would neither be offended nor evasive) and I was able to give her very direct answers (knowing that she wanted honesty, and not a sales pitch).

For example, when she asked me to quote for her first property purchase, I told her that we are not cheap and that if she was price sensitive, she would find firms out there that would do it for less, but that you get what you pay for. The cheaper firms keep their costs down by having teams of paralegals supervised by one solicitor, rather than having all the work done by qualified staff. That doesn’t necessarily mean the work will be of a lower quality, but just that it will take longer. I made it clear that there were no hard feelings if she decided to go elsewhere, and in fact I admired her for doing her research and considering all the options before she decided what was the right course of action for her. She is her mother’s daughter.

Today, we talked about their wills, and (as I would expect) she told me that she had seen that she could go to an online company and have them draw up a will for a lot less than my quote. She asked me (again, as I would expect) what was the difference between our service and the online services. I explained that in terms of the drafting itself, it would no doubt be the same. I have no reason to believe that the online drafting services’ staff are any better or worse at drafting wills than I am. However, the difference comes not in the quality of the drafting but the quality of the advice. If you say that you want to leave your house to your unborn child, the online service will probably draft a perfectly valid provision in your will to achieve that. However, what they won’t do, is give you the advice about how to arrange your affairs to achieve your aim. For example, if she owned her property as a joint tenant with her partner, then no matter how well drafted the will is, her half would automatically go to her partner. So what she would need to do is sever the joint tenancy now, so that her will would have effect. At the prices the unregulated and online will services charge, you can’t necessarily expect them to be able to afford to recruit staff who would even know to ask the right questions, let alone know how to put the answers into effect. Many of them also don’t have insurance, so even if you do feel they got something wrong, your recourse may be limited.

Of course, one alternative is to just spend all your money and have a good time, so you don’t need to worry whether your will is fit for purpose, but assuming that you’d prefer to plan for the future (the good things and the not so good things) always use an expert.

Kleyman & Co Solicitors. The full service law firm. Loving what we do!