What do 250,000 wills tell us about private practice in 2026?

The latest Today’s Wills & Probate Podcast looks at what can be understood from analysis of over 250,000 Wills and what clients really want. 

The data is drawn from LEAP Estates' comprehensive 2026 Private Client Industry Report which also looks at close to 200,000 LPAs to inform a profession responding to shifting demographics and rising complexity.

Joining host David Opie is Andy Hitchon, Head of Private Client at LEAP Legal Software and a former private client lawyer himself for a "been there, done that" conversation. 

One of the key takeaways from the report is people are planning earlier, living longer and forming more blended families, creating a surge in trusts, protective structures and repeat planning cycles. Hitchon points to the growing normalisation of later‑life relationships, recalling an 83‑year‑old client preparing to remarry as evidence of how social change is reshaping estate planning needs.

Regulation and tax policy are adding further pressure. With thresholds frozen and property values rising, more estates are drifting into the IHT net, increasing both the need for proactive planning and the likelihood of future disputes. Hitchon warns that the sector must be ready for this shift, particularly as HMRC tightens expectations around tax advice.

What emerges from the conversation is a sector in transition: more technical, more holistic and more exposed to risk than ever before. Hitchon’s message is clear; the profession must adapt, and quickly.

The Today's Wills and Probate podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider, and at www.todayswillsandprobate.co.uk. Subscribe today to hear all the latest news and views across the wills and probate sector.

Thank you to our podcast sponsors LEAP Estates, Estate Research, Property Ladder Group and Finders International.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:23

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SPEAKER_00 0:44

Hello, welcome along to the latest Today's Wills and Probate podcast. Today we're talking about a new report published by Leap Estates. I'm here talking with Andy Hitchin, head of private client at Leap Legal Software. And it's the 2026 private client industry report, surprise, surprise, where it's no no prizes for guessing what it's aimed at, but it's uh it's an overview of the sector and learnings, I suppose, Andy, from the huge number, I mean, you know, well into six figures of uh wills that you have looked at as part of the process for drawing this information together. So I'm really interested to see what comes out of the report today. Thanks so much for joining.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

No problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Uh you've got an interesting background. You're not actually a technologist, you're a lawyer. So you come at this with I guess with two different hats on, don't you? Tell us a bit about your background and how you've kind of ended up moving from poacher to GameCube, if you like.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, no problem at all, David. I am a qualified lawyer. I qualified at a very odd time, I qualified in 2009 and actually qualified as a construction lawyer, which in the 2009 recession was a really, really weird time to qualify. I pretty much became an insolvency lawyer overnight when I was doing that. I moved into private client law in 2012 because I found that I enjoyed construction, but my heart wasn't quite there. So I did quite a weird thing in the world of law and I went into a completely different area at the other end of the spectrum. And it was the best decision that I made. So, in that sense, because 2012 went into private client law. 2016, I took over the running of a private client team. I was looking after a regional branch of a law firm and became partner in that law firm, was undertaking my STEP qualification at the time, which I got in 2018. So I'm fully qualified as a STEP member as well. 2023, I became an equity partner in the regional law firm that I was in that merged with another practice. And then 2025, I was in conversations with Leap, and 1st of October started with them as their head of private client. So yeah, my background is very much lawyer, always had the interest in software and technology, and had to learn pretty fast the acronyms that come along with technology, which has made me realize that lawyers are their own beast.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

I guess from Leap's point of view, bringing in somebody that that kind of brings coalface experience into the team, brings its own benefits. Because of course you can look at the platform with a critical eye and sort of say, well, yeah, this would kind of work for a private client lawyer. This kind of thing wouldn't really work. Uh, you know, I mean, I'm I'm I assuming that's kind of part of your remit.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

100%. I mean, it was strategically and from an investment perspective with Lee Park, you know, it's a fantastic, fantastic decision because myself and the other verticals, the other areas of law where they've done this, they've done similar in bringing in, you know, big hitters, partners from other firms, it means that we are looking at them with those pain points that lawyers deal with day to day. We understand what's there. So, you know, you that the developers can develop, they can look at what's there, they can be speaking to the users. But for us to be able to come in as lawyers and and speak to users and say, look, we get this, we've been there. We understand in private client that you're spinning 27 plates at any one time, and that's just before lunchtime. We understand the difficulty of trying to find AP on an estate account that you can't get to balance. And we understand the day-to-day pressures of running a business, of running a law firm at the same time. It makes a huge difference and it adds such value back. And I think it just helps the users feel really heard at the same time. They can feed back to us and say, look, we really like the idea of this being in there. And I go, Yeah, that's great. That's something in private practice I would have loved to have in there. So I've come in and one of the biggest things I've done is I've listened. I've listened to the market, I've listened to the users, I've listened to my colleagues, and then I've come in with my ideas as well. And I've said, look, this is the way that I really want to shape what we've got, which is already great, and make it even greater. There's a lot in the warehouse that we're doing, there's a lot that's already been implemented, and we'll carry on doing that.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

I said that the topic of conversation would be this recently released report that you've done, which looks at nearly a quarter of a million wills, you know, nearly 200,000 lasting powers of attorney. It's a decent chunk of work, isn't it? I mean, first of all, tell us uh about some of the uh background to the report and you know what you were looking to achieve from it. I mean, did you have any preconceptions, for instance, on what you might find?

SPEAKER_02 5:20

We we wanted to to look at sort of observed behaviour and and and and look at what's actually happening rather than just the data and try and pick out trends with with what was there. From that, looking at this large-scale data, and as you say, huge, huge amounts of data of the wills, I think it was 88,000 nearly that had were wills that had trusts in them, for example. We've managed to sort of carve out four main key areas and four core areas, and and that came from looking at the data and then understanding why the data may have changed. Four areas in particular that we were looking at were sort of demographic shifts in demand, how longevity can affect life planning and trust planning, increases in blended families and exclusions within wills. We've looked at that before, but we wanted to dive into the whys and what we saw in industry trends and why this was happening. And then a lot, a lot of people will have found recently is the regulatory updates and how the government and how laws are changing and how that's impacting on what planning is taking place and how that is a huge, huge part of what lawyers and and and what will writers need to be looking at, and and estate planners, because it's it's huge in terms of those changing and the impacts that they're going to have and have already had, but will certainly have over the next two years in the government plans that they put in place.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

I always think and you know, listeners are aware that today's wills and probate sister publication, today's conveyancer, we've got a podcast on there. And I often see that there's so many parallels between private clients and conveyancing. And the parallel I see here is on that final point is uh that there's so much more now to estate planning than there ever used to be. You know, we we we describe conveyancing as as perhaps being like you know, spinning lots and lots of of different plates, and there's lots of uh changes that that's happening in that space. Similarly, you've got tax considerations, like you say, you've got age considerations, you've got vulnerability considerations, uh, you've got capacity considerations, and not to mention that private client lawyers now need to be tax experts as as well as you know, the ability to uh not just understand people but understand uh what capacity they might have as well. It this is a increasingly difficult job to do.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

It's always been that there is a a certain type of mentality behind a private client lawyer, and it's I think once you start to understand what goes into that, it is far more than just drafting a will, than drafting an LPA. As you say, capacity issues. There are so many things that are coming into it at the moment in terms of the way that things have changed and just the way that society is changing as a whole, blended families, they call it, some might say crudely crudely, the the silver divorces, where you are now getting more divorces in later life because life expectancy is longer, people are living longer. So, with that comes the ability for people to live independently for longer, and it becomes more complex because what that then brings into it at the same time is second marriages, third marriages, even. I can talk from practice that I remember full well a chap coming to see me to draft his will, and he was 83. And I said to him, Why are you getting why are you amending your will at this stage? He said, Because I'm getting married next month, I'm marrying my childhood sweetheart. I was I was widowed 10 years ago, I've lived on my own, and I've met somebody else. And I'm gonna fly off to Australia and get married in Australia and I'm gonna have my honeymoon there. And this is an 83-year-old chap. So, you know, society has changed on the basis that that life expectancy is longer, in the same way that state pension used to be known as the old age pension. It's not that anymore because people are living longer, and and so it it's it was never intended to be something that was there for everyone. It was there as something that that only if you were in your old age that you you got that. But then there's the other side of it as well, because with an increased life expectancy, there are risks that come along with it. Now, things like dementia that aren't the age isn't is isn't isn't a sole factor at all for dementia, but as you grow older it in the risk increases, and it's expected that 1.6 million people will be affected by dementia by by 2040. So planning isn't becoming just about who inherits what, it's about protection and deployment during life. It's not a one-stop shop anymore, and it used to be that you used to walk in, you could make a will, and what we're finding now is that that planning tends to accelerate in sort of the mid-40s. We're still seeing that sort of below 2% of adults are making a will at age 35 and below, so quite a low number there. Again, that can be things like cost of living crisis, it's harder to save up now for deposits. So until such times as people are getting to a stage in life where they feel they've got sufficient assets, they're not necessarily stepping in. But that acceleration into mid-40s, and then the group with wills where you've got the most amount of wills being made is sort of age 65 to 74, followed very closely by age 55 to 64. So it's after that accumulation of assets is occurring. It's not, as some might think, when you're over that sort of retirement age that people are coming in and doing it. People are planning a lot earlier. And that's the same with powers of attorney. In fact, what you're seeing is powers of attorney are being made at a younger age than they are necessarily with wills. So the trends that we're seeing there is people are becoming more aware that the risks of incapacity are great. And I think we're helped a lot because there's a lot more on the TV, there's a lot more in the media these days around powers of attorney and around mental capacity than there ever was. It's not a taboo subject to talk about anymore. And people are aware they want to do something to protect their assets, but they're also aware that care homes are a real thing or care at home costs a lot of money. So they're trying to put in place systems so that family members, for example, can look after those assets. As we've said earlier, you know, holistic planning is so important rather than it just being a one-off. The trends that we're seeing is it flows. And in private practice, we we will all know that you get the same people coming in time and time again. And that's because things are changing. And it's just really important that that we align with what's happening in life and what people are actually doing in planning. And it is starting to show, and that's what the trends are showing in the in the report.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Is a lot of that demand being driven by clients, like you say, who are you know much more aware of this because they see it on the news, or you know, it might have happened to a relative or something along those lines? And or is it a case that as a profession or we as a we as the private client community are much better at advising clients? It's not enough for you to come in and just write your will. You know, what what you need to think about your LPA, you need to think about putting stuff in trust, you need to be thinking about how you're going to pass these assets on to your children. Are we better as a profession at that customer journey for want of a you know, what better phrase?

SPEAKER_02 12:51

I don't think we are over in the UK as as quite as far as say America is, because estate planning in America is is its own huge, huge thing. You know, we'll we will open over here a will file and do estate planning, but actually estate planning in its own right is really, really important. We all know that what we should be doing, and when we speak with clients, we'll be saying, look, anytime there is a major event in your life or in the life of any of your beneficiaries, you need to be considering the impact that will have on you as an individual and your estate planning. But that's not always the case. So I think it is now, I think it's something like 60% of people have said that they feel comfortable now talking about life events with family members, and it's not a taboo anymore. So I it's a combination because people will sit and talk with relatives and say, look, what happens if you lose capacity? What happens if something happens to you unexpected and it results in X, Y, or Z? And it is from the point of view of incapacity and it's from the point of view of death. So it is spoken about a lot more now than it ever was. And that's not to say it's from the point of view of coercion or duress, it's good planning to sit down and say, come on, we need to get this sorted out. The lawyer will always ensure, and the estate planner will always ensure that they're seeing their clients in the right way, that they are not subject to any sort of juuress. But at the same time, it as I said, it's really sensible to be to be talking about it as a now. And it's becoming proactive rather than reactive. And I think that's a shift that that we're seeing with the age, the acceleration of it becoming younger when people are starting to look at what's there. Regulatory change is driving it a lot at the same time. We all know what's happened governmentally over the past couple of years, and it's big changes that are coming in. Agricultural property relief, business property leave, caps on all of that, the farmers that have drove down the middle of motorways in the tractors and been outside parliament. It's it's important that these things are happening, but not just that, that they then come in and they get their planning sorted out. And yes, the government's responded, they've upped limits in terms of reliefs from from what they were, but there's still going to be the 2.5 million cap that's coming in, you know, and well, 5 million across a couple, but it still means there are a lot of people out there that have to do a lot of planning. We we saw something like 1.46% of wills in the data that we captured, specifically referred to business property. That's not to say that other wills didn't have business property included in them, but these were ones that specifically had it spelt out. My expectation is that we're going to see that increase because now with these thresholds, it's going to become paramount. Tax advisors have said, look, you know, this is something that needs to be looked at. And so the lawyers, the estate planners will have to look at that. And succession planning does need to continue at a heavier rate than it probably was doing beforehand.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

There's just so many elements that kind of go into this, aren't there? You know, you've reeled off uh quite a number of things there that we need to be thinking about without even touching on uh house prices, which have you know steadily increased over the years. The the continued cessation of of any uplift in uh in IHT rates means that essentially, you know, if you own your own home and average house prices have notched over£300,000 uh over the past couple of uh months, you're not a huge distance away from uh the IHT threshold, are you?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Exactly. And the and the data was very telling in that regard. Gross estate value is is even higher than that. So some of the you know, gross estate value, not taking into account mortgages, is really near to thresholds, and that's that's double thresholds as well. You know, you're talking sort of 570,000 plus with a lot of the with the average values. What we're seeing with those estates is is is the majority that over half do pass across to spouse. So that is on first death, and obviously then there's more planning to be done. And I think it's about a 51, 48, 48, 49 split between spouse and then to children, really, in first instance. But that's what we would expect to see because of the the first death, second death scenario. House prices are increasing, yet, thresholds seem to be staying the same. The double-edged sword to that, the only thing is that cost of living is is as high as it is, and sadly can bring estates back down. Care home fees are at the rate that they're at, and again, can weigh heavily, but frankly, most people would rather have that money still sat in their estate rather than spending it elsewhere. So, again, the the uplift in the trusts and and and what we've seen in terms of of property trusts within wills, for example, on first death. So we're not talking about deliberate deprivation of assets, being very careful in in that regard, that there's nothing there that shows that assets are being dissipated at a rate when they shouldn't be. That is something that we we've seen more and more of over the years, and there's there's certainly been an increase for most people. The house is their is their main asset. So protecting at least half of it on first death. And again, that's not necessarily just from the care home point of view. That is the the blended families that we've we've seen an increase in that over the years, going back to that longevity, that life expectancy, the ability for first marriage, second marriage. There's not as much stigma around it anymore. We were seeing for a long time the remarriage scenario and everything else was there was a stigma, there's not anymore. So it's a social norm to have a second marriage, but with that comes the protection, and that's not only for care homes, but that's for the family that was from the first marriage and for the spouse that's part of the second marriage. I think there we we we'd also see potentially exclusions in wills as an increase, and and sadly the other side of it, which I do think will increase with all of this, is the dispute side. Disputes within wills, contentious matters are certainly going to be on the rise. And I think part of that is not only because of life expectancy, longevity, and what we were talking about, but just because of the sheer stress now that the government is putting on, because so much will go in tax if the right planning isn't put in place. And that causes its own friction before you even set off family frictions and you you start looking at family dynamics, in its own right, that can be very impactful on estate planning.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Interestingly, one of the things you haven't particularly dived into, and I I appreciate your doing a review of the information that's held within Wills, is you've not particularly kind of gone into why people aren't writing wills. I mean, you mentioned there, for example, you know, your data suggests that less than 2% of under 35s are are writing wills. I mean, have you got any views, Andy, on on why that continues to be such a a challenge for the sector, given some of the downward pressures that we've we've talked about in the course of the discussion already?

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Yeah, 100%. And it is something that that's that I've thought about in in quite a depth. I think because it is harder now to get on the property market and the cost of living is as high as it is, saving up and getting assets behind you isn't necessarily as easy as it has been previously. There is still a mentality that I don't have enough there. So, what's the point in me getting a will put in place? It'll probably cause anyone tuning in to be thinking, well, that is giving me cold sweats because it's not the case at all. If you've got any sort of asset whatsoever, you should be thinking about getting your will put in place. It's one of those whereby when I've looked into it, I think something like 58% of people that don't have wills say that they want to make wills within the next 24 months.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

So the intention is there. What I think we're going to see, though, as a result of all of the changes that are coming about is as part of that planning, the Bank of Mum and Dad, we're going to see gifting being more paramount than it's ever been, getting your seven-year gifting rules in. That money is going to come down the lines possibly quicker than it has before. And on that basis, what I would expect to then see, hopefully, is that younger generation starting to think, I've got more capital behind me than I've ever had before. So on that basis, I'm going to start getting my planning sorted out. And again, I think they do think of it from the point of view of powers of attorney. There's something in the minds, I think, of somebody that's in the workplace that might be thinking, well, I've got to get a power of attorney coming, getting put in place in case they have an accident, not just through dementia or otherwise. Something about wills, it's always been the same. Don't need it yet. Or think about that at the time. Not going to do it until I get married. And just the misconceptions that come along with it. Oh, I've got a partner, I've been with her for God knows how long, you know, it's fine, we don't have anything together. Or oh, I'm married, everything passes to my wife. Oh, well, you've got kids. No, it doesn't, not necessarily. So I think there's there's an education there, and again, that comes into that holistic planning that we spoke about earlier. I used to say in private practice, whoever I was Going to see, look, two to three years, review what's there. If a life-changing event comes up for you, your beneficiaries, whether it's positive or negative, get back in touch because that is the time that you need to be thinking about what's there. Are we going to move towards a system whereby we've got multiple files for a client and we'll have file numbers one to ten for Joe Blogs because we've seen them that many times over the years? If that's when they first come to a firm and they're in their 20s, 30s, early 40s, well, yeah, we should be doing that. That's where it should be. And putting mechanisms in place so that we're actively reaching out and saying, you know, you put a legacy in your will that was 10 grand, you did that three years ago. Is that 10 grand still 10 grand? What's changed? And that's going to take an education on both parts. It's an education on the practitioner to be able to reach out and have an ability to look at what they have in their will bank, for example, and be talking to their clients and not necessarily just relying on their clients to come back to them because a 10 grand legacy in 20 years isn't worth 10 grand. It's worth a lot less. And we don't know what the circumstances are of that person. If they've inherited massively that 10 grand, they may want to up it. If they've been through financial hardship, they may want it to go down, or it might just be a result of the economy that that 10 grand should be 20 grand. And if they've not done something to put it so that it grows with inflation, it could be a gift in the will that then isn't what they actually intend.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

I want to ask you a question about whether you think that we as professionals, you as professionals, are qualified to provide the penopoly of estate planning services that we've kind of touched on uh today, you know, things like financial advice, tax advice, insurance advice, care home fees. This is again drawing on parallels to other the other publications that we run, there is a a move within family law, for example, to start to involve very specialist professionals within, for the sake of argument, a divorce process. So, you know, we get the pensions expert in, perhaps get a counsellor in of some description to help with some of the emotional support that the client might need. Understanding that the lawyer's role is the legal bit. We you know, we sort of build this support base around the client. Do you see that you know that that's that to your point about the American model, that feels much more like the American model. We're not there yet, but do you see that sort of a the direction of travel?

SPEAKER_02 25:23

100%. It's absolutely paramount to have that in place. We can specialise in what we specialise in. And recently, one of the changes is as we'll have seen in terms of HMRC, basically saying you've got to register if you're given any form of tax advice. What we do, you know, as private client lawyers, court protection, conveying if they're talking about SDLT, capital gains tax, all of a sudden we become tax advisors and we've got to register for it. And frankly, we're not we're not there with it. So having what I used to call you know almost your holy trinity there and make sure that you've got it all lined up, there is nothing better than when you are estate planning, if you can be sat and you can have your tax advisor, your accountant, your financial advisor. And if you're dealing with somebody that's vulnerable, perhaps the social worker, your capacity assessor, all on hand, it's absolutely paramount that those are all in place, particularly with the risks that we're seeing with this increased contentious side of things as well. Because what we don't want is for mum to change her will and daughter, you know, to be excluded, or for a gift to her to be lessened, and somebody's come back and go, they were coerced, it was a capacity issue, and you're just completely behind at that stage. I've had it before where I've had capacity assessments done where I know full well the person is maybe elderly, but they have full capacity. Why did I do that? Because I know likely it's going to get challenged in the future, and what better thing is it to have your ducks lined up and to have it sat there already? And it just offers so much more support for the client. It does become holistic, it becomes there is someone there to talk to about the decision to gift away a large amount because there'll be tax implications to it. I used to say to clients, I can draft you, I'd have a client come in and they're saying, right, I want to put my house into trust. Great, okay. Well, have you spoke about the repercussions of doing that? Oh, I want to put 400,000 into trust. Well, what have you done over the last few years? What does your tax advisor think is the best asset to be putting into that trust? What are you going to do when that money's put into trust? Oh, I don't know yet. Well, where's your financial advisor telling you what you need to do with it? So it is not enough, frankly, to work alone in that remit. It has to be that from an estate planning perspective, you have the people that you know and that you trust that you can either refer or work with. There is nothing better than being able to say to a client, have you got someone? And if they have great, can I be speaking with them? Quite often I think it's sensible to get an authority for those parties to be speaking amongst themselves because as soon as it becomes mutual, it's great to have conversations. And there is so much that every party can get out of it when they're all together and they can be talking. I can watch a YouTube video on how to repair a car, doesn't mean I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'll take it and see the mechanic. And it's the same way with financial advice, you know. As we we shouldn't be given financial advice. We can steer and we can say, Well, look, have you thought about this? Um, from an inheritance tax point of view, we can advise, but actually, to get to the nitty-gritty of it, it's so important that the right advice is given to the client.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

You mean you talk about you know watching a YouTube video? This is this is the age where people are now sort of coming into the practice thinking they know what they want because they've banged it into Chat GPT or to Gemini or whatever it might be, and it's pumped out, yes, well, you need uh lasting power of attorney, and then you need uh you know a trust doing this. That's the sort of next challenge, I think, isn't it, for the profession to be able to push back and say, do you know what? Yes, but no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

Yeah, 100%. There will be those people that go, right, well, I know what I want to do, so I'm gonna stick it into ChatGTP and it gave me a will. Is it gonna ask you all the other questions that surround it at the same time? No, it's not. Is it gonna give you all of those other considerations? No, it's not going to. Is it going to be able to look you in the eye and see if you feel comfortable with the decision that you're actually going to make? Is it going to question you and challenge you on those? No, it's not. And only the human being can do that, and the person with the expertise can do that. And I am 100% behind AI being used in the right way in the right manner, making sure you're not going down the route of hallucinations or something there that gives you a result. You know, the person that bangs it into Chat GTP, if they're, you know, if they're not looking at it and they're not reviewing it, they don't know what the output is and whether it's correct. They're just assuming it is. Half the time, they don't even know where the output comes from. So it's so important that if the AI technology is being used in that regard, it's biprofessional and it's human in and it's human out and it's looked at properly when it comes out of that system, and the right robust systems are being used. It sort of leads me on in a way to sort of where the law commission's going with the ability to do digital wills and what's behind that, and people thinking, oh great, I'll just be able to log on and I'll just be able to fill in a form and it'll populate it digitally for me, and I can store it and I can sign it that way. And again, it's only ever going to be as good as the system that's behind it, and the protections, the controls, and the certainty is what you get from the legal profession. It's the old adage of being able to walk into WH Smith's and pick up a will packet for£17.50 off the top shelf. It isn't going to dive into your life and look at your assets and say, Well, you've got this. This is what you need to think about. You're going in with a preconceived idea. What you then often leave with can be very different if you've sat with a lawyer. The amount of times I would sit with somebody and they go, Never thought of that. Well, you're not meant to, because that's the job of the lawyer to put that in front of you, and that's why we study and train to do what we're going to do. And I think that for me is one of the big things around certainty with what you're doing. You don't know as well if somebody's sticking it into who who's sticking it into Chat GTP? Who's sat in the room when they're producing that document? You know, his daughter there saying, Mum, do you want me to put this in for you? In that will, brilliant. It's been signed. It will lead to huge, huge disputes over authentication, validity, jauress, capacity. If you want it to be done properly, it needs to be done properly, in my view.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

I always say it's very difficult to do justice to a topic as huge as this uh in uh the time that we have for the podcast. And of course, you know, we've we've been looking at the uh report as well and trying to draw out some of our inferences from the report. Last uh sort of couple of minutes of the discussion, Andy, and really kind of drawing on what you've just said there about you know prompts, coercion, you know, putting information into these things and in a potential increase in contentious output. Part of the law commission's objective is to create greater accessibility to uh later life preparation, whether it's wills, estate planning, LPAs, whatever it might be. And I just wonder whether with your lawyer and your technology hat on, which way you might lean in terms of whether you think that's a good thing, a bad thing, somewhere in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

There's obviously a lot of a lot of concerns with the the reforms. I do welcome the reforms because it's a potential to reflect modern behaviour, especially for the digitally confident sector of society. And that's not just to say the millennials or or a younger generation, because frankly, I know you know grandparents who who are who are absolutely fine with technology and more than happy to be sat on Facebook and to be looking through to redo their insurances. So it will open it up, and especially to those who perhaps can't get out, can't get into an office. It's always been quite difficult as the lawyer in private client to look at those home visits. Time's tight as a private client practitioner. And then if you are going out to see a client at home who physically can't get into your office, there is always that sort of conflict between, well, do I charge to go out and see them? Because if they can't get into the office, where do I stand with that? But at the same time, you know, what does digital bring with it? As you say, it brings on that those risks. You're not in the room. So if you're sat on a video call, who's on the other side of the camera, you can ask them to pan around. You can do a 360. It doesn't mean there's not somebody that's that's listening on the other side saying, When you're on that call today, mum, make sure you say this or you say that. I do welcome it because I think it will allow a proportion of society that have probably struggled beforehand to actually get the advice that they need, but it has to be within the right constraints.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

At the risk of cutting what has been a very interesting conversation short, it is as much as we have time for on the podcast today. I'm really appreciative of you joining uh the discussion, Andy, and sharing not just the output of the report, but actually, you know, lacing it with kind of your own thoughts and inferences, both from your your time in practice and your role now as well. So uh thank you very much indeed for joining. Thank you. The Today's Worlds and Probate Podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider. It's also on today'swords and probate.co.uk. My thanks to Andy. Thank you as ever for listening, and we'll see you again soon.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

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