Fledgling watchdog the Legal Services Consumer Panel has hitherto manifested a laissez-faire attitude to the post-Legal Services Act market - most notably perhaps by declining the opportunity to call for a ban on referral fees.

So its pronouncements today on will-writing go against the grain.

Currently, of course, there are no restrictions on who may draft wills for consumers for payment.

This state of affairs has long appeared anomalous in a complex and relatively affluent society when, as panel chair Dianne Hayter says, a will may have ‘huge personal and financial consequences for those we care about most’.

Most solicitors will support the panel’s call for will-writing to be made a reserved activit­y.

This is particularly so because will-writing is an area where a significant minority of the public are likely to shop around.

Less palatable are the results of the panel’s mystery-shopping exercise, which found that the same proportion of wills prepared by solicitors and will-writing companies were ‘failed’ by the panel’s assessors.

The joint regulators’ education and training review will need to interrogate this evidence closely.

Also notable is the panel’s observation that in a reserved market ‘will-writing companies would not need to meet all the regulatory requirements placed on solicitors’.

This must not be interpreted as tacit approval for a ‘regulation-lite’ culture for non-lawyers.