'Every different area that has proved a traditional and profitable area of legal work has come under attack from one quarter or another,' he says. 'It will give a proper emphasis to an area of work which is under attack from the big institutions at a time when we should be at the forefront,' he said.Mr Nally fears probate work could go the same way as conveyancing. Mr Nally says this will help to heighten the profile of probate work generally. They didn't know whether they were gaining or losing market share or even what rates the competition was charging.'Last week, Ed Nally, chairman of the Law Society's land law and succession committee, asked the Council to demerge his committee, enabling a separate probate committee to concentrate on serving its own specific interests. On 2 July at the second Annual National Conference for Probate, Trust and Estate Practitioners (see panel), Chancery Lane officials will launch a probate section modelled to some degree on the American Bar Association's own highly effective section groups.Gerald Newman, the Society's deputy director of communications, says it is the existing and potential competitive threat to solicitor's traditional probate practice that is partly why the Society chose probate as its first section.Mr Newman explains: 'Research we recently carried out showed many of the 12,000 probate solicitors work in isolation with a lack of knowledge of how the market is developing. The Law Society is planning to head off this competition. Some are already feeling the squeeze from non-solicitor will writers, accountants and bankers doing estate work.Only last week the Lord Chancellor's Department confirmed that it was keen to press ahead with powers which were given in the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 to create a new category of authorised probate practitioner to compete directly with soli citors. If they don't, they may find their businesses falling victim to a new breed of licensed probate professional. PROBATE SOLICITORS HAVE LITTLE OPTION BUT TO EMBRACE MODERN METHODS IF THEY ARE TO SEE OFF THE COMPETITION, WARNS ROBERT VERKAIKHigh street probate practitioners are being urged to cast off their dour image and find new ways of marketing themselves.
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