First, translate the search term
If you have been searching for an estate planning attorney near you, the first thing to know is that the UK does not use that job title. What you are looking for here is either a wills and probate solicitor (a regulated lawyer who can advise on your whole estate) or a professional will writer (a drafting service that is usually cheaper but sits outside statutory regulation). The second thing to know is the part most people miss: will writing itself is not a regulated activity in England and Wales, so checking credentials matters more than proximity. What follows is general information to help you choose, not legal or financial advice for your own situation.
GOV.UK's guidance on making a will puts the threshold plainly: you can write your will yourself, but you should get advice if your will is not straightforward. Second marriages, stepchildren, property abroad, a business, agricultural assets or a dependant you want to exclude all count as not straightforward. Before you contact anyone, it is worth running through our making a will checklist so you arrive knowing what your estate contains and who you want to benefit.
Solicitor or will writer: the regulatory gap
The Legal Services Act 2007 restricts six "reserved legal activities" to authorised professionals. Drafting a will is not one of them; Schedule 2 of the Act expressly excludes wills from the reserved instrument activities. Probate work, by contrast, is reserved: preparing the papers for a grant of probate must be done by an authorised person. In practice that means anyone can legally sell you a will, but only regulated professionals can be paid to handle the core probate paperwork after a death.
| Solicitor | Will writer | |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory regulator | Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) | None |
| Qualification required | Yes, admitted to the roll of solicitors | No legal requirement |
| Insurance | Compulsory professional indemnity insurance | Only if required by a voluntary body they join |
| Complaints route | Legal Ombudsman and the SRA | The firm itself, or its voluntary body if it has one |
| Can do reserved probate work | Yes | No |
Voluntary bodies do exist for will writers and are worth looking for. The Society of Will Writers, founded in 1994, describes itself as a non-profit self-regulatory organisation: members must follow a code of practice, breaches can be reported to its Professional Standards Board, and it arranges professional indemnity cover for members. The Institute of Professional Willwriters runs a similar membership scheme with its own code. Membership of either tells you the business has voluntarily accepted standards and oversight; it does not make it a regulated law firm.
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How to check credentials in ten minutes
- If they claim to be a solicitor, verify it. The SRA's Solicitors Register is free and definitive. It confirms whether somebody is a solicitor, where they work, whether the SRA regulates the firm, and lists firms that have been closed down and people prohibited from practising. A genuine firm will not mind you checking.
- Search by location and specialism. The Law Society's Find a Solicitor service lets you filter practising solicitors near you by area of work, including wills and probate. Look for firms where private client work is a core practice area rather than a sideline.
- If they are a will writer, ask which body they belong to. Then confirm the membership on that body's own directory, and ask to see evidence of professional indemnity insurance, including the level of cover.
- Ask where the will and your file will be stored, what happens to stored wills if the business closes, and what the full price includes. Storage, registration and future updates are common extras.
- Be cautious of pressure selling. A common pattern with poor-quality services is a cheap headline will used to sell expensive extras, particularly trusts promising to avoid care fees or probate. Take any trust proposal away and check it independently before signing; our guide to whether a trust can help you avoid probate explains what these arrangements genuinely do and do not achieve.
When the answer is specifically a solicitor
For a straightforward estate, a competent will writer or even a carefully executed DIY will can be adequate, and every will must meet the same signing and witnessing rules whoever drafts it. A solicitor earns their fee where judgement is involved: blended families, excluding someone who might claim against the estate, business or farm property, assets overseas, tax planning around the £325,000 nil-rate band, or any doubt about capacity. Solicitors also connect naturally to what happens later, since the same firm can deal with probate, which will writers cannot do as reserved work. Our pillar guide to wills covers what goes into the document itself, and if you are thinking ahead to the administration stage, see whether you need a solicitor for probate and what a probate solicitor actually does. For choosing between doing it yourself and paying for help at that stage, the DIY vs solicitor tool and our breakdown of probate solicitor costs are the fuller guides; this page is deliberately the short version. There is also a companion piece on finding a wills and probate solicitor near you that goes deeper on comparing individual firms.
Whichever route you take, get the credential check done before the first meeting rather than after. If your estate has any of the complexity flags above, a wills and estate planning specialist can usually tell you within one conversation whether you need full advice or just a well-drafted document, and that steer alone is worth having before you commit to anyone local.