Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

The arrival of Covid 19, and the necessity of trying to keep the legal system functioning with locked-down courts, virtual hearings and the like has meant that other aspects of the justice system Transformation programme have perhaps been forgotten.

The latest edition  (July 2020) of the HMCTS blog, Inside HMCTS, reminds us that other things are also happening, designed to modernise and approve the efficiency of the services provided within the legal system.

One development which has been quietly worked on for a number of years is the creation of means to carry out probate – the process of dealing with a deceased person’s estate – online.

Historically it has been an extremely difficult process, surrounded by a lot of procedural and legalistic complexity.

The HMCTS reform programme included a plan to modernise the process, to make it more straightforward both for practitioners and individual members of the public. An online service has been available since the end of 2019. Around 60,000 members of the public have used the service. And increasing numbers of solicitors are also using the service.

Stephen Cobb, a solicitor with a firm of lawyers who were involved in developing and testing the new process, has written a very interesting account of how the new system works. He stresses that it is still work in progress and that the current system will not necessarily deal with every complex estate. But, for general use, he is impressed with how it works. And he likes the freedom it gives him to submit the bulk of the paperwork on line.

For details, see https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/2020/06/05/reforming-probate-for-the-twenty-first-century/