Who? Katie Gilligan, 27-year-old private client associate with Chester-based Walker Smith Way.


Why is she in the news? Ms Gilligan helped investigate what might be the first case of fraud using a do-it-yourself (DIY) will kit. In forging her mother's signature on the kit, bought for £9.99 from stationers WH Smith, Dinah Lambert hoped to net £64,000 of the estate instead of the £17,500 she had been left. But when Ms Lambert wrote to her stepbrother, David Allen, and two stepsisters saying they were only due £2,000 after her mother's death, Mr Allen contacted Walker Smith Way and asked them to investigate the matter.



Ms Gilligan turned to forensic graphologist Stephen Cosslett, a director at Document Evidence in Birmingham, who eventually proved using handwriting analysis that the signature on the will was forged. Mr Allen then went to the police. Ms Lambert pleaded guilty to obtaining a money transfer by deception, using a false instrument and making a false statement on oath. She was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court to seven months' jail.



Route to the case? Ms Gilligan deals with the contentious probate matters at Walker Smith Way, and was assigned the case.



Background: Law and French degree at Cardiff University and legal practice course at the College of Law in Chester. Ms Gilligan qualified at her current firm in 2004 and was promoted to associate in September last year.



Thoughts on the case: 'We had to obtain documents signed by the deceased and by Dinah Lambert, then send them to Mr Crosslett, so we had to get court orders to get copies of cheques she had signed prior to her death. The pre-action disclosure was not difficult, but it was difficult to find the material. We knew she had applied for membership of Mecca Bingo but they had nothing - that's how desperate we became. It was a case of "how much can we find?"



'Obviously we don't deal with forged wills very often. Nothing added up, but we knew that [the signatures] would be crux of the evidence. I had not used a graphologist before, but I'd certainly use the same one again. It was the logical thing to do. His report was never contested. But at the start we didn't have sufficient samples - we must have had some cheque stubs [of the deceased], some correspondence she'd sent to family members, and that triggered our pre-action for disclosure for the cheques. We ended up with 30-50 examples of the deceased's writing.



'It was an interesting case, but obviously the family suffered emotionally due to the risks that these DIY wills expose.'



Dealing with the media: 'I don't deal with the media very often. We've had a lot of local interest, mainly from the Chester Chronicle and the Liverpool Daily Post, but all the media have been very sympathetic to our client. They've been very approachable, everyone's been very nice and have reported fairly. I haven't seen the negative side [of the media], and hope not to, ever.'



Rupert White