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Even by Gazette standards of publishing PR material this is remarkable. Here’s what a journalist might have written after half an hour looking at publicly available material.

Who are Collective Legal Solutions? They’re another company who are “passionate” (their one page website says so).

“When choosing to trust Collective Legal Solutions with your estate planning needs, you are assured Professional Excellence as Standard.”

What is that “Professional Excellence”? They say “We are regulated by The Society of Will Writers and Estate Planning Practitioners (SWW). Members of SWW put themselves forward for regulation – membership and thus regulation is by application rather than compulsory.”

So their unqualified operatives can opt for regulation by the SWW but aren’t necessarily regulated by SWW.

Who are the SWW? The Society Of Will Writers And Estate Planning Practitioners (formerly The Society of Will Writers) is a company limited by guarantee run by Mrs & Mrs McMillan of 7 Sedgemoor Close, North Hykeham, Lincoln, who are the only officers (there have been lots since it was set up in 1994 but all the others have resigned).
The 2014 Accounts showed them to have net assets of minus £44,752, and slight improvement on 2013. New accounts are due on 31st January.
The Society of Will Writers and Estate Planning Practitioners has no website. The Society of Will Writers does and it appears to have the same registered office a SWW, but as it doesn’t comply with Companies Act about giving business information such as its legal identity and company number. The same applies to Collective Legal Solutions.
Searching The Society of Will Writers website using the Collective Legal Solutions postcode reveals one member under Collective Legal Solutions. So it appears they have one person who is a member of an unrecognised regulatory body.

They also says you can rely upon them because “Our legal team, which includes a company Solicitor, possess a great number of legal qualifications including law degrees and various STEP qualifications such as the benchmark Will Writing qualification The STEP Advanced Certificate in Will Preparation” and “For the education and qualification of our legal staff we look to the leading worldwide body for trust and estate professionals, The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). STEP qualifications are recognised as the benchmark standard for trust and estate professionals.”

What does “look to” mean – it doesn’t mean that the “legal staff” actually have to do any training.

Searching the STEPS website for Sheffield reveals nobody at Collective Legal Solutions.

Their website says “Collective Legal Solutions has quickly grown to be one of the largest independently owned specialist legal services providers in the country.” Unless “independently owned” and “specialist” have some special meaning I can see no basis for that statement.

My credit rating facility says that Collective Legal Solution Group Limited’s Working Capital was minus £70,000, and their Balance Sheet shows a remarkable Tangible Assets figure of £350,000 for the past three years and no other assets, while the subsidiary Collective Legal Solutions Limited show Debtors of £1,001 for the past three years and nothing else.

I assume that the Co-op know what they are doing. As a humble solicitor this looks like another brilliant deal by businessmen who know far more about these things than I do.