How do I stop probate solicitors' fees spiralling out of control?

After checking that you need to get probate, if you need or want to use a solicitor to apply for probate you should find out how they charge for their services. If you have to pay for a lawyer’s time, here we share some ways that you can keep costs down. 

Do you need a solicitor for probate in Scotland?

If there’s a valid Will, or the estate is worth less than £250,000, then you don’t need one. 

When you might need or want a solicitor for probate:

• if there’s no Will and the estate is worth more than £250,000
• if executors have fallen out and can't agree on things
• if there are complicated tax arrangements like trusts

Find out more about when you may or may not need a lawyer for probate.

Check how probate solicitors charge

There are three different ways that solicitors charge for probate work. It’s important to understand how you’re going to be charged before you sign a contract with them. 

Some lawyers will automatically start working after the family makes contact. But, if you haven’t signed a contract, under Law Society rules, they can’t charge you.

Most solicitors will keep a note of how much time they spend on your case and charge accordingly. This will be charged at their hourly rate which you can find out before you decide to become their client. 

In Scotland, lawyers commonly charge between £200 and £300 per hour (plus VAT!), sometimes more. Often, there are extra charges for handling money (referred to as 'commission') and a charge for ‘responsibility’ which is usually a percentage of everything in the estate excluding property. 'Commission' and 'responsibility' alone can often run to many thousands of pounds.

With this method of charging, you’ll be charged for every phone call, letter, and email they make or send. You’ll also only know how much the bill is at the end of the process, when it’s too late to do anything about it. It is not uncommon to get a great shock when a bill of thousands of pounds comes in. If you signed a contract like this, then you will have no recourse.

This type of charging should be avoided as it will have no bearing at all on the work that’s been done. You’ll have an idea of how much the bill will be before you start, but it may also be a really straightforward case that you end up massively overpaying for. A typical percentage that lawyers charge is 3% or 4% of the total estate meaning £3,000-£4,000 of fees per £100,000 of assets. 

This is quite a rare form of charging for probate work as it is often quite difficult to predict how much work will be involved at the beginning. There will be strict limits around what is included and what’s not, meaning that any unexpected things that crop up will cost more. 

Even though you can get peace of mind on cost, the common complaints around communication problems and delays are still likely, especially with cheaper, higher volume law firms.

Ways to keep costs down if you use a probate solicitor that charges by time

Create a list of all the organisations the deceased had a financial relationship with. You could take this a step further by notifying the organisation of the death and finding out all the values of all the accounts as they were on the date of death.

Solicitors often make extra charges to receive any money (like from a bank), so tell them you’ll collect all the money. If there is no Will, then they may have to handle the money under the terms of an insurance bond that is required for cases without a Will. Having said that, you could negotiate this type of charge out of the terms of business with or without a Will.

Most solicitors will be charging you every time they contact you (or anyone else who is contacting them). You could save things up and ask all your questions in one go, perhaps weekly. Try to coordinate with anyone else involved so all communication goes through one person to avoid paying for them to explain the same thing to more than one person.

It’s always worth shopping around for the best terms and service levels. Check review sites for similar types of work, and ask friends and family for recommendations, especially around cost and how well the solicitor communicated with them. The solicitor you go with to manage the estate may not be the best one to sell any property as the property selling market is a lot more competitive. It’s easy to do these two parts of the process with separate firms.

It is incredibly important to read the letter of engagement and terms of business the solicitor is obliged to give you before you become their client. Often under the ‘Fees’ section, they may have percentage charges or vague clauses talking about responsibility and urgency. In practice these don’t really mean anything and they can add thousands of pounds to a bill for no additional work.

Our award-winning 5-star Probate Support Service costs a fraction of the price of a solicitor and we’ll guide you through the process, step-by-step, in plain English, and make sure you get it 100% right. 

We’ll supply you with all the resources you need to successfully apply, and we even do a manual check of all your documents before you apply to make sure you’ve not made any mistakes.

We have a 100% success rate for all our checked Scottish probate forms and a 100% 5-star record on Trustpilot.