Forty applications for Alternative Business Structure (ABS) licenses reached the formal decision phase in the Solicitors Regulation Authority's (SRA) approval process between April and September this year, according to statistics.

The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) has, this week, agreed new guidelines with the British Bankers Association (BBA) and the Law Society of England and Wales that will reduce administrative obstacles for both families and professionals in probate-related dealings with banks.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) has started a final consultation, proposing that Will writing and estate administration, along with extraction of the Grant of Probate, should be added to the list of reserved activities in the legal sector in England and Wales.

Christine Houghton, Sales and Marketing Director at Kings Court Trust, provides a summary of the ABS licences issued throughout August and shares her thoughts on the situation so far…

Kings Court Trust has today become an Alternative Business Structure (ABS) licensed by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), who will be regulating probate and estate administration activities.

The Law Society has supported the introduction of mandatory regulation of Will writing, probate and estate administration activities.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) has launched a consultation to become a regulator of probate work and a licensing body for alternative business structures (ABSs), Legal Futures reported in late June, citing ICAEW's draft application.

Reserving probate and estate administration services will cause ripples in the marketplace, but ABSs will make more waves.

In his March 2012 report “Costs and customer service in a changing legal services market”, Adam Sampson, the Chief Ombudsman at the Legal Ombudsman (LeO), emphasises that customers are at the centre of what every legal services provider does. The report contains a number of stories in which he identifies that the uncertainty surrounding the cost of legal services generally, law firms’ lack of clear pricing policies and poor customer communication, as being the source of most complaints to LeO. He singles out the traditional practice of charging open-ended hourly rates for special criticism, saying that customers have the right to know in advance what the cost of buying legal services will be.