Does your firm have clients, or do you sell legal services to consumers? Your view may not even matter if the new vanguard of providers and regulators coming over the horizon with their new fangled ways are successful in turning traditional models of legal provison on their heads. You have been warned.

The Legal Services Act is reality in England, and inevitable in Scotland. Although the legal landscape is both subtly and fundamentally different down south, their early exposure to ABS has much to teach the unwary of Scotland.

To many in Scotland, Rita Leat, President and CEO of the Fellowship of Professional Will Writers and Probate Practitioners is like those early covered wagons that broke through South Pass, Wyoming, forging the first settlements of the American West, watched by the native population with bemusement, and no comprehension of the scale and significance of the change about to be visited upon them, which they were powerless to stop or even influence.

Much of the debate about the Legal Services Bill proves it. The Firm was proud to provide a platform to allow concerned voices to be raised, but the heralds making their way towards us from the foothills of the Southern Uplands are not only from a different legal culture, they speak an entirely different language, so utterly removed from the terms of reference of the Scottish debate that it is clear, even at this early juncture, that either the Scottish legal landscape is out of step, or the rest of the UK is. And even if the latter, there are more of them, they march to a different beat, and they seem determined as hell to get into the Scottish legal market and make it their own. And all to a tune that chimes with “consumers” and that they’ll lap up with relish. (they don’t talk of clients, not these guys. Oh no. its consumers all the way)

Rita and the Society have recently completed a series of meetings in Scotland with the aim of applying to become a regulator of legal services under the Act once it comes into force, which it will inevitably do given the extent of cross party support, although the details remain up in the air at the moment. The Legal Services Bill was amended in June to require non lawyer will writers to be regulated, in no small part to their lobbying.They have been doing this for over a year and a half, and aim to facilitate entry to the profession to entrepreneurs who wish to set up will writing practices, much in the way that the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 1990 opened the door to licensed conveyancers. However, the political and economic climate is very different from the prevailing mood that snuffed out the Licensed Conveyancing experiment, and if the FPWPP are typical of the Visigoths coming over the hill. It is not supermarkets, the AA or Virgin who’ll be competing for your business. Independent and highly motivated competitors are already gearing up to secure a slice of each facet of legal practice and formalise the ad-hoc specialisms that exist in current general practice. Will writers are just the first.

“We feel consumers are not currently protected by the activities of some will writers operating in England and Wales. We have set about putting together a fully operational regulatory body, operating as if we were a regulator in terms of the safeguards we put in place for consumers, and the standards set for instruction takers, will writers and probate practitioners,” Rita told the Firm.

“The Legal Services Act 2007 wanted to do two things. One was to open up the provision of legal services to offer consumers choice and protection, and make sure anyone who offers a substantial legal service is regulated and is qualified to do so.

“There is a feeling amongst consumers that going to a solicitor may be more expensive, and for whatever reason, I do think consumers should have the choice, which will ensure most consumers come forward and write a will.”

The energy and effort that is going into achieving this entrance to the Scottish environment is not profession-centric. Rita and the Fellowship are firmly targeting your clients, and if you hope to hang on to them, you are probably going to have to start calling them consumers too. Your competitors have deftly and carefully cultivated the language of the punter, and are telling them things they want to hear. If Scots law firms want to stay competitive, they’ll need to learn that trick, and fast.

“During the debates that have gone on it has become very apparent that there needs to be a lot more effort put into consumer education about legal services. I’m not sure the average consumer understands what the Legal Services Board’s function is. The will writing industry has to play a part in educating consumers and make sure all consumers are aware that will writing is currently not a regulated activity, and what the options are for them to take,” Leat says.

“It isn’t a case of us doing anything different for will writers who may be operating in Scotland. The ethos and ethics are the same. We want to protect consumers, and consumers in Scotland are being affected in the same way as consumers in England. We want to raise the profile of those who want to offer will writing services, and to enable them to do that we want to have them properly qualified and regulated so that consumers in Scotland will have a choice.

“Predominantly in Scotland most people will use a solicitor, which is fine if that was your choice to do so. However, if that is in any way a barrier to consumers coming forward and having wills written then the choice should be there for them to have the different service.”

There are others queuing up behind them too. The English Institute of Legal Executives, a body which offers qualifications within one specialised area of law, is also understood to be training its sights on Scotland and is the type of organisation that could stand as a competitor to the Law Society in regulating paralegals, as it plans to do during August. The Fellowship is endeavouring to promote and inspire an entirely new niche profession as an attractive option for graduate entrepreneurs to take business away from established general solicitor practices.

“We want to offer a professional career within Scotland for will writers,” Leat explains.

“To have the choice to go to a professional will writer we have to make ourselves known in Scotland. We do that by offering a professional service that we will spread by word of mouth and advertising, should we be chosen as regulators.

“We take the roles of consumer education and legal training very seriously, and we would like to be able to be a body that consumers will eventually speak of as they do the Solicitors Regulatory Authority in regulating solicitors. We do that by promoting confidence in our will writers, and the only way we can do that is to endure they are trained and regulated by us.”

The debate over the terms and specifics of the Legal Services bill seems to be somewhat prosaic and tangential, given the vigour and specification of the competition to the legal market that is not only gearing up to carve into the Scottish market, but has been preparing to do so for years already. The message they are selling to potential clients is likely to appear extremely attractive to them, and in all probability will find traction amongst a public client base that has not fully absorbed the legitimate concerns of the Scottish legal profession over the aims and effects of the act. There is no denying that as a collective, Scottish solicitors have not pled their case very well to the public, and as a result there is a misplaced public perception about the status and material wealth of solicitors that does no credit to their principled concerns over the effects of the bill.

But none of that is likely to matter once the market opens up to cheaper, better organised and externally regulated professionals whose actions aim to fragment an already split profession. Scots solicitors may have been guilty of infighting in recent months, perhaps at the expense of taking their eye off the greater fight just over the border, heading north fast. The Scottish Government confirmed during dune they will permit the Fellowship to apply for entry as regulators.

“Having had talks in Scotland we are confident we can work alongside the other legal professions. It is not a case of directly competing with them, it is offering another service for consumers. Some will choose to go to will writers and some will choose to stay with solicitors, and we think that is absolutely correct, “ she says.

“We have had some contact with the Law Society, and were received well. Until the Legal Services Bill and indeed the Legal Services Act come into fruition, it is simply a case that regulation has been seen to be needed in will writing for many, many years. That has provided an opportunity and framework for regulation to take place. Prior to the bill, it has been very difficult to introduce new legal services arenas and markets. The legislation has brought it to the table. There will still be resistance from some solicitors, but others I have spoken to are embracing the idea of having a level playing field.

“Solicitors on a daily basis see clients’ wills that have been drafted incorrectly, or have clients coming to them with concerns about documents they have had prepared by a non solicitor will writer. Solicitors want to see that consumers are handled correctly.”

Whether you agree with that or not, or even whether you find the terminology somewhat vacuous, the punters will lap it up. And the Fellowship -together with other incoming regulators and “legal service providers” know it.

“We are dealing with will writers in England who want to pick up clients in Scotland, and those from Scotland who want clients in England. We are trying to protect consumers, and the market shouldn’t prevent us from going from one area to another. Scotland, although it is a smaller market, still has consumers who need protection, as we feel consumers in England do. As a professional body we want to promote will writers wherever they may be,“ she says.

“The fact that the market is small doesn’t prevent us having the same objectives in Scotland as we have in England.”

“I see the job of the Fellowship to clear the path of the fear that is within the legal profession. The fear is not necessarily helping the consumer. Moving forward and having a legal profession that is diverse, open to change and able to change depending on what consumers want is something that should be embraced by the legal profession.

“There has been a lot of criticism aimed at the solicitors profession for not promoting their services and making them available and accessible to people in a way that they choose to access them. You can close your ears, close your ears and carry on the way you are. If you are doing that you are not giving the professional service consumers need.

“We need to come on board, offer something different that consumers would like to have and to work alongside other professional bodies. I am a great advocate of specialist legal providers. I do believe in paralegals offering a very good service in conjunction with solicitors. I am very much in favour of licensed conveyancers being specialist in that area. From a consumer point of view, someone who spends every day of the week on one area of law, then the chances are that the are gong to be on top of that area. That is not necessarily that case if you go to a general practitioner in law. I would like to see sectors moving away from the generalist to the specialist. There is nothing to fear.”

Perhaps solicitors have become accustomed to having it their own way, setting the terms of the debate and gatekeeping the law for their clients. The prevailing wind drifting from the south starts from an entirely different set of first principles, that, however misguided or spurious, puts consumers at the heart of everything. Law will either have to stand its ground and fight, or roll with the punches. The news from Holyrood is that the Bill is going to be passed. The news from England is that they are coming after your clients. The news from Scotland has thus far been hard to decipher. A clash of culture is inevitable.

I fear it may not be pretty.