Is Your Wills Bank Generating Work for Your Firm?

With the UK economy facing recession in 2023, it’s important that high street law firms mitigate the anticipated reduction in conveyancing work and associated revenue as best they can. 

Many high street law firms have a large wills bank, sometimes with many thousands of stored wills which potentially is an excellent pipeline of future work and fees for the firm. 

With the likely economic downturn, it is time high street firms increased activity on their wills bank and encouraged clients to update their wills. Unfortunately, many firms fail to grasp this opportunity and neglect the potential income stream. 

Some law firms store wills themselves for testators, other firms outsource storage to a third-party specialist storage company. Whichever option you chose, it is important to make sure the wills are kept in a fireproof cabinet from a risk management perspective, and you have an accurate, up to date database of the testators so you are able to keep in touch by writing to them. 

As a general rule, write to testators every 5 years asking if they wish to review their will.  Also write to the testator if there has been a change in legislation which may impact on the will. Take the opportunity to advise whether a Lasting Power of Attorney is necessary. 

Depending on the size of your firm’s wills bank, a rolling programme of writing to testators should be established at your firm and become standard practice with your private client team. How many testators you contact each month will depend on your lawyers’ workloads and the resources available to deal with the response. 

Record the new matters opened as a result of the marketing activity with source of business codes so you can track where the work has come from and ideally the fees it has generated. 

Having an up to date, accurate and well managed will bank is not only important from a business development perspective, it is also highly relevant when it comes to valuing your law firm for any future sale.  

Will banks can add value when it comes to a disposal of a law firm, but only if you are able to demonstrate that the will bank has been carefully managed, is up to date and accurate. 

Get it right and your wills bank can not only be a steady stream of work for your lawyers and revenue for your firm but also add value to your firm when it comes to any future sale. 

If you’d like to discuss any of the themes in this blog, please contact me on ih@hopkinslegalconsulting.co.uk or call 07916669095