Most of the people who make a will in the City of London do not live there. They work there, and firms around Fleet Street, Moorgate and Liverpool Street have built a practice around the lunchtime appointment: a partner at an accountancy firm with capital locked in the partnership, a banker with vested and unvested shares, a Lloyd's underwriter with assets in three currencies, a trainee with nothing yet but a pension and a death-in-service benefit. For them the will is only part of the plan; the rest is nominations, trusts for children, a business lasting power of attorney so that someone can run a company if its owner loses capacity, and inheritance tax, which the April 2025 move to a residence-based regime has changed for anyone who came to the City from abroad.
The Square Mile's residents have different questions. The Barbican and Golden Lane flats are long leases from the City of London Corporation, and an estate that includes one must deal with the Corporation as landlord, the service charge and the lease's requirements before the flat can be transferred or sold. Many Barbican leaseholders are elderly and long-settled, so lasting powers of attorney, care-fee planning and the Court of Protection are everyday work for solicitors here, and the executors of a Barbican estate are often adult children living far away.
Whoever the client, the rules are the same: without a will the intestacy formula applies and an unmarried partner inherits nothing, home-made wills fail on technicalities, and executors are personally liable for probate mistakes. Wills and powers of attorney are usually fixed-fee; probate is charged hourly, fixed or as a percentage of the estate.
The will and probate firms below serve the City of London, verified first and then nearest. Background: the explainer on wills, trusts and probate, the costs of making a will and obtaining probate, the guide to what a lasting power of attorney does and the general will solicitors page.
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