If you are currently studying the Legal Secretaries Diploma course and have studied the Wills, Probate and Administration module, you will be familiar with the fact that inheritance tax is not currently payable on estates below the “nil rate band”. The nil rate band (NRB) is currently set at £325,000, meaning that for any estate over this figure, tax is payable on the difference at the rate of 40%. 

However, as of 6 April 2017, a change to this law has come into effect.

How Making a Small Change Can Make a Big Difference

Changing landscape

Gone are the days of the 1-to-1 or 1-to-3 ratio of Secretaries to Fee Earners. We’re now more likely to see 1-to-7 or even 1-to-10, and barely a week goes by without a firm announcing the centralisation of support resources, or support restructuring. 

The role of support services is constantly changing, as is often seen in drives for efficiency of back office support, specialist support teams, lower cost locations, outsourcing, in-sourcing, near-shoring … there’s a lot of change! 

Here is a selection of vacancies from our Legal Secretary Jobs Board this month:

Legal Secretaries – Setfords Solicitors
Location: Guildford, Surrey
Salary: £28,000 per annum

Setfords Solicitors are looking for Legal Secretaries to join their team in Guildford, Surrey.

The successful candidates will either be qualified Legal Secretaries or currently undertaking a Legal Secretary qualification. They will be hard working with a can do attitude.

Experience of working within a law firm would be a bonus but not essential as full training will be provided.

Here is a selection of vacancies from our Legal Secretary Jobs Board this month:

Legal Secretary – Clinical Negligence – Leigh Day
Location: London
Salary: Competitive

Leigh Day is seeking a Legal Secretary to assist a Partner and the team within their Clinical Negligence department. The successful applicant will hold a responsible position providing secretarial and litigation support to the Partner.

You will be reliable, organised and have fast and accurate typing skills together with excellent administrative skills. The ideal candidate will be computer literate with up-to-date word and excel skills, together with good standard of spoken and written English.

Whilst we all fully appreciate the fact that using the correct terminology in all areas of law is imperative, Wills are perhaps of the most importance. After all, we are talking about discharging the last wishes of the deceased: therefore, we really do need to ensure we get things just right.

Alas, though, when it comes to the terminology used in Wills, this is not always the case. It takes just a couple of words that could be construed in another way to be inserted into a Will to really mean the difference between the testator’s dying wishes being carried out and part or even all of the Will’s legacies falling into intestacy. 

One of the great things about the Institute of Legal Secretaries and PAs is the fact that they present you with a choice to either study many different areas of law through their Legal Secretaries Diploma course, or alternatively, you may choose to study individual areas of law through their Single Subject Legal courses. 

Rent charges have existed since the 13th century and have traditionally provided an income for landowners who allowed their land to be developed. It would be fair to say that in recent years, rent charges have not been a major feature of any conveyancing transaction, but that may be set to change. There have been a number of cases recently where private investment companies have been imposing heavy financial penalties on homeowners for non-payment. These fines have far exceeded the rent that was due, and in this article we will highlight what steps Property Lawyers should take to warn clients when a rent charge appears on a title report. 

What is a rent charge?

We at ILSPA believe that, with the right initiative, our students have the potential to reach any goal that they aspire to. This belief has been supported recently in the case of Jacqueline McGuigan, former Legal Secretary, now Lawyer, who rose to media fame due to a significant employment law case. This achievement stands as a testimony to the fact that Legal Secretaries with talent, ambition and motivation have unlimited potential within the legal sector and could even go on to winning cases that are reported in the national news.

Our Legal Secretaries Diploma course is greatly valued by both our Students and the law firms in which they secure employment. Law firms around the country hold our Diploma in high regard and often cite it for the reason that they chose to employ a candidate. We also have firms enrolling their staff on our courses to gain the legal knowledge and skills they need. Our Legal Secretaries Diploma enables students to advance their professional skills, elevating their performance to exemplary standards whilst providing them with a solid basis of legal knowledge and procedure. Our students are empowered to become an asset within their workplace, providing a superior service to the benefit of the companies that appoint them.

The Internet must easily rank as being the best invention of the late 20th century. The ease in which we are now able to communicate with each other around the world really is worth its weight in gold. And alas, this is exactly how more and more unscrupulous individuals feel about the potential opportunities to exploit others and even steal using the World Wide Web.

We have all heard about the dangers of e-mail scammers lurking on the Internet and now realise that we have to protect ourselves from these attacks. This is now more prevalent within the legal industry than ever before, with around 500 law firms having been targeted in a recent e-mail scam from one source alone, as reported by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA).