Client Trust Key for latest PCS initiative

Private Client Solicitors has revealed that it has taken another significant step forward with an initiative designed to safeguard the long-term interests of clients.

The firm has secured permission to establish its own trust corporation to provide a continuity of support for individuals whose financial affairs it manages.

In doing so, PCS has become one of only a handful of legal practices in the North West to have their own trust corporations.

Together with fellow PCS partners, Nicola Walker and Paul Gotch, the firm’s founder and Managing Partner, Tasnim Khalid, has become one of the corporation’s three directors.

Ms Khalid described the setting up of the trust corporation as a further sign of the firm’s maturity.

She added that it would appeal to a fast-growing client roster which includes some of the region’s richest people.

“Quite often, firms appointed as executor to someone’s estate or to act on a family trust have their involvement in someone’s succession planning undermined by changes within their own business.

“Trust corporations are not dependent on the contribution of a single legal practitioner and, therefore, are able to offer continuous service even if an individual lawyer handling a particular client’s affairs is ill, changes jobs, retires or dies.

“In that sense, they provide great reassurance to clients wanting to ensure a consistency of guidance over a number of years in addition to those events, such as bereavement or the loss of capacity, when speed and familiarity can be of the essence.

“Establishing a trust corporation is not necessarily a swift process, not least because it means applicants having to demonstrate how robust they are as businesses.

“Our trust corporation is led by directors who are all senior lawyers as well as being qualified with the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) and featuring in the UK’s top legal rankings.

“I have no doubt that the new arrangement, founded on that vast collective experience, will be a great comfort to clients, especially those needing a professional executor, attorney, deputy or trustee.”

Since 2017, most trusts have to be registered with HMRC. The latest figures published by the Trust Registration Service (TRS) show that some 733,000 trusts and estates worth more than £3.1 billion had been registered by March last year.

The creation of the PCS’s trust corporation is the firm’s latest major step forward and comes just weeks after it was one of only two North West practices named in the top tier of a ranking of legal advisors to Britain’s wealthiest men and women by Chambers and Partners.

Ms Khalid was highlighted as “a sector expert”, who is “extremely knowledgeable”, while Ms Walker was described as “a superb practitioner…highly technical, personable and efficient”.

Mr Gotch, meanwhile, was identified as being “an excellent lawyer”, able to explain “complex concepts in easy-to-understand ways”.

The Chambers’ ranking demonstrates how far the firm has come since its launch in August 2021.

In October last year, the firm featured in a list of the 250 best law firms in England and Wales compiled by The Times newspaper.

Last month, the firm was also named Private Client Team of the year in the Manchester Legal Awards.

Ms Khalid has herself won a string of awards, including being chosen as Private Client Partner of the Year in March’s Northern Powerhouse Awards.

That triumph followed her winning another notable title, the ‘One To Watch’ category for emerging female entrepreneurs in the latest edition of the Northern Power Women Awards.

In April this year, Ms Khalid was appointed to the board of the Charity Commission by Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

PCS deals with complex probate work, business succession, trust and estate planning on behalf of a growing number of clients including wealthy individuals and entrepreneurs both across the UK and overseas.