Paul Hutchinson, Director and Head of Private Client at Hutchinson Legal and Associates Ltd, has been awarded the Will Writer of the Year Award by the Institute of Professional Willwriters. He spoke to Today’s Will and Probate about winning the award and why he finds will writing such a satisfying career…
Congratulations on your award Paul. What did winning it mean to you?
"I’m proud and I feel very privileged too. The announcement was made at the Institute of Professional Willwriters’ AGM in March. Ironically, for the first time in six years, I was unable to attend — I was snowed under with work. I found out through the grapevine a few days later — people were congratulating me on my award and I wasn’t sure which it was so I contacted the IPW.
"The Will Writer of the Year Award is given to people for different reasons and I was chosen, I understand, because I offer technical expertise and support to IPW members free of charge — members can go on to the IPW forum with their queries and I give my opinion — and I also prepared a guidance note for a client, on a specific matter, which I shared with all the IPW members. So those two things were in my favour."
How did you get into will writing?
"I did a law degree, a Masters in Law and a PHD in Law but I didn’t want to qualify as a solicitor. I saw so many people going into the traditional training contracts and having to pay significant fees to do the LPC — then, at the end of it all, they weren’t guaranteed a job within a solicitor’s firm. So I wanted to find something that allowed me to practise law without being a solicitor. I worked in personal injury law until, ten years ago, I was made redundant. I had to figure out what to do and, by chance, I met up with a friend who said that his wife, a financial adviser, was looking for someone to work with her clients, drafting their wills for them. I worked in this way for a short while before joining the IPW.
"I now provide wills, tax planning, trusts, powers of attorney and probate / estate administration services – everything in the private client sector. And my business partner is a qualified litigation solicitor who handles divorce and corporate litigation matters.
"I really enjoy will writing — it’s so rewarding. I meet an incredibly wide range of people with different backgrounds and personal circumstances.
"I’ve taken my STEP qualifications — the STEP Advanced Certificate of Will Preparation is one of the highest awards for professionals who prepare wills. And, since I joined the IPW, I’ve done hundreds of hours of CPD. I’m a fellow of the IPW now and also a fellow of the Institute of Paralegals as well as being an affiliate member of the Society of Later Life Advisors.
"The next step for me, I hope, will be to qualify as a Notary Public. That will be the icing on the cake."
You obviously need good people skills to be a will writer?
"Yes — often I’m dealing with estates where I knew the deceased very well and that can be sad. And making wills for people who are terminally ill — I find their bravery and strength of character amazing.
"In my job, I’m meeting clients all the time. There are some I can have a light-hearted joke with and others that expect me to act incredibly rigidly all the time because that’s what makes them feel comfortable. It’s all about gauging the client. But I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not — I’m a 36 year old lawyer with over 10 years’ experience in writing wills. Clients get what they see — a professional who practises in only one area of law and tries to have the most up to date knowledge so as to give the best advice to clients.
"I’ve taken as many qualifications as I can in my field to achieve recognition and also to give my clients peace of mind. I stick to what I know and I truly believe that I’m helping people. There’s never been a solution I haven’t been able to find for a client. I might need to bring an associate in and I’m not afraid to ask for help but I’ll always find something out that fits."
Do you think that will writing should become regulated and that one day only qualified professionals will be able to practise it?
"The analogy people often give is: ‘You can be cleaning windows Monday to Friday and writing wills on a Saturday.’ Anyone can do it and that does worry me — will writers don’t even require professional indemnity insurance. Simply being a solicitor isn’t enough, either — a solicitor might not have written a will for 20 years and therefore their knowledge may be out of date.
"A few years ago, I was asked to sit on the Legal Services Board Panel of experts moderating wills to establish whether will writing should become a regulated activity. I looked at a selection of anonymous wills prepared by everyone from solicitors to will writers to non-qualified individuals and had to ascertain whether there was a discrepancy in the quality of wills being produced based on the level of training they had received. It was an honour to be asked and, personally, I thought there were discrepancies and I believe that will writing should be regulated. But the trouble is, every time we hear a horror story about an unregulated will writer who’s produced a defective will, another story emerges about a qualified solicitor who has been jailed for plundering the accounts of a deceased client.
"Even administering an estate isn’t a reserved activity so somebody could run off with hundreds of thousands of pounds of the deceased’s money and there’d be no recourse.
"I can’t see will writing being unregulated indefinitely. There needs to be a system of checks and balances to ensure individuals preparing any sort of legal documentation are fit to do so, whether they’re a solicitor who sits an exam to prove that, even though they’ve been conveyancing all their career, they’re now fully trained in writing wills or a non-solicitor like myself who’s joined the Institute of Professional Willwriters and is undertaking CPD and has PI cover."
Do you think some of the laws around wills are a little archaic?
"One of the main pieces of legislation under which we write wills is the Wills Act of 1837 so of course people are going to ask: ‘Is this Act still relevant? It’s 200 years old.
"So yes the law is archaic. But, in my opinion, it is, on the whole, fit for current purpose.
"With any law people will have, often with good reason, cause to moan because there’s always going to be someone affected adversely by legislation in its current form.
"But I genuinely believe that if any law is so bad — so archaic — it will result in enough people voicing their displeasure in frustration and an amendment will be made. If there were a set of laws that everybody agreed with 100% of the time we’d be a very robotic society. Instead our society is, as it should be, fluid with a mixture of cultures and situations and challenges.
"As someone who provides professional services it’s my job to achieve a client’s goals and objectives within the constraints of the rules that we have. Every now and then a client will say: ‘That’s not fair.’ And often I have to agree that it isn’t fair — but to explain that we have to work around it and find a solution the client is comfortable with."
Are there any changes on the horizon in your field?
"Not in wills, so much — but new legislation was introduced this month (October 2014) regarding the way an estate is distributed when someone dies without leaving a will.
"There were two main changes in intestacy legislation. One is that if someone dies leaving a spouse and children, whereas previously the spouse would get £250,000 and a life interest in half the remainder while the children received everything else, now there’s no longer a requirement for a life interest for the spouse. And in a way, that makes things easier to administer — it’s a positive.
"The other change is that when someone dies and there aren’t any children, whereas under the old legislation the spouse would get £450,000 with the remainder going to the deceased’s relatives in a strictly defined order, now, where there are no children, the spouse will get absolutely everything. That will be quite interesting — to see how people respond to that. I think the changes, as always, were brought about by the need to simplify matters."
What’s next for Hutchinson Legal?
"I’m content. Hutchinson Legal & Associates Limited comprises a full-time administration director, my co-director and me and we’re happy with that. We don’t want to expand and become a faceless organisation. The personal touch is important and I enjoy my work and meeting clients so much that I don’t want to take on staff and become a man manager instead. If we reached a point where we were too overloaded with work we’d have to reassess the situation."
End Credit: The Institute of Professional Willwriters was formed in 1991 with the aim of setting high standards for individuals and firms offering will writing services. It currently has 900 individual members representing 265 firms. More information about the IPW can be found at www.ipw.org.uk.
