How OrdoLux Handles Wills, LPA and Probate in One Matter Workspace

Private client work is, in many ways, the opposite of the kind of work that legal technology is usually designed around.

Litigation has deadlines, opponents, case numbers. Conveyancing has a defined transaction arc — instruction, exchange, completion. These are workflows that map neatly onto task lists and status trackers.

Private client work is different. A will takes however long it takes. An LPA registration might sit at the OPG for three months with no action required in the meantime. A probate matter can span two years, with long quiet periods punctuated by bursts of complexity. The client is often elderly, anxious, grieving. The relationship is long-term. The detail — who gets what, under what conditions, subject to what tax consequences — matters enormously and does not fit neatly into a checklist.

And yet, the administrative overhead of private client work is immense. Testator details, executor appointments, attorney schedules, OPG references, asset inventories, beneficiary distributions, IHT calculations — all of it needs to be recorded accurately, tracked over time, and kept accessible for supervision and file review.

Most practices manage this in Word documents and spreadsheets, with varying degrees of rigour. OrdoLux takes a different approach.

One matter, one workspace

The Private Client tab sits inside the OrdoLux matter workspace alongside time entries, documents, billing, compliance and correspondence. There is no separate module, no separate login, no switching between systems.

When a matter is assigned to a Private Client department, the Private Client tab is available automatically. It contains three independent workflow sections: Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney, and Probate. A matter can have all three, or just one — they coexist without interfering with each other.

Every section has its own stage tracker. Every stage tracker is auto-initialised the first time the section is opened — so there is always a clear record of where the matter stands, without any manual setup.

Wills

The Wills section captures everything a fee earner needs to record about a will instruction.

Testator details are recorded at the top — name, date of birth, domicile, capacity confirmation and the date instructions were taken. These are the basics that should be on every will file and often end up in a client care letter with no structured equivalent in the matter record.

Executors and trustees are recorded separately, with names, addresses and roles. The distinction between executor and trustee — and the cases where the same person holds both roles — is handled cleanly without conflating the two.

Guardians can be recorded where the testator has minor children. This is a detail that often gets buried in attendance notes and is difficult to locate quickly during supervision. In OrdoLux, it's a discrete field on the matter record.

Beneficiaries are split into residuary beneficiaries (with share percentages) and specific legatees (with asset descriptions and values). Residuary shares are validated automatically — OrdoLux flags if the percentages don't add up to 100%, which catches the kind of drafting oversight that can cause significant problems.

Charitable gifts are recorded separately with charity names and registered numbers.

The stage tracker covers the full sequence from initial instructions through to execution, storage and safe custody — with notes available at each stage and a progress update email that can be sent directly from the matter via Microsoft 365.

Lasting Powers of Attorney

Most clients who need an LPA need two. Treating them as a single workflow creates problems: the attorneys may be different, the certificate provider may be different, the registration timelines will differ, and the status at any given moment may be different.

OrdoLux manages Property & Financial Affairs and Health & Welfare LPAs as independent workflows on the same matter. Each has its own set of records and its own stage tracker.

For each LPA, the fee earner records:

The donor — name, address, date of birth
Attorneys — primary attorneys and any replacement attorneys, with names, addresses and appointment basis (jointly, jointly and severally, or a specified combination)
Certificate provider — name, address and capacity in which they are acting
People to notify — anyone the donor has specified should be notified when the LPA is registered

OPG tracking is built in: submission date, registration status (draft / submitted / registered / rejected) and the registered LPA reference once received. These details are on the matter record, not buried in an email thread.

The stage tracker covers 14 stages from initial instructions through to registration and certified copies.

Probate and Estate Administration

Probate is where the administrative burden is heaviest. OrdoLux provides a structured workspace for the full administration, from the first call through to distribution.

Estate overview captures the basics: deceased's details, date of death, domicile, estate type (testate or intestate), and whether IHT is likely to be applicable. Executors and administrators are recorded here.

The asset and liability schedule is the core of the probate workspace. Assets are entered in categorised groups — property, bank accounts and cash, investments and shares, life policies, vehicles, business interests, overseas assets, and other assets. Each entry has a description, value and notes field. Liabilities are recorded separately.

As entries are added, the IHT summary card recalculates in real time:

Gross estate
Total liabilities
Net estate
Nil-rate band (standard £325,000)
Transferable NRB (where applicable)
Residence NRB (where applicable)
Total NRB available
Taxable estate
IHT payable (at 40%, or 36% where charitable giving qualifies)

No manual arithmetic. No separate spreadsheet. No risk of the calculation being based on an earlier version of the asset schedule.

Beneficiaries are recorded with name, relationship to the deceased, share percentage (for residuary beneficiaries) or specific entitlement, and distribution status. The fee earner can track whether each beneficiary has been paid and when.

The estate accounts PDF can be exported at any point during the administration — a clean, professional document summarising the assets, liabilities, IHT position and beneficiary entitlements. Useful for reporting to beneficiaries, for supervision, and for the file at closure.

The stage tracker covers 20 stages for testate estates and 19 for intestate, covering everything from initial instructions through to HMCTS application, grant receipt, asset collection, liability settlement and distribution.

Why we built it this way

The alternative — and the approach taken by most practice management platforms — is to treat private client work as a series of custom fields bolted onto a generic matter record. The fee earner ends up entering a will's executor details into a notes field, tracking LPA registration status in a task list, and maintaining a separate spreadsheet for the asset schedule.

This works, after a fashion. But it means there is no consistent structure across the department, no easy way to supervise files at scale, and no single source of truth for a matter.

OrdoLux takes the view that the workflow should be built into the platform. The fields for an executor are different from the fields for an attorney. The stage sequence for a testate probate is different from the sequence for an intestate. These distinctions matter, and a generic task list doesn't capture them.

The IHT calculation is perhaps the clearest example. Every probate fee earner currently does this calculation somewhere — usually in a spreadsheet, sometimes on paper, occasionally in their head. It is error-prone, it lives outside the matter record, and it has to be redone every time the asset schedule changes. Putting it inside the matter, recalculating in real time, means it is always current and always auditable.

Included as standard

Private Client workflows are available to all OrdoLux firms at no additional cost.

There is no private client module with separate pricing, no premium tier that unlocks probate functionality, no additional per-matter charge. Every firm on OrdoLux has access to the full platform — including Wills, LPA, Probate, Conveyancing, the Court Forms Repository, time recording, billing, Microsoft 365 integration, Checkboard AML, Stripe payments and everything else — for £50 + VAT per fee earner per month, rolling monthly.

Getting started

If you're already using OrdoLux, open a private client matter, go to the Private Client tab, and the workflows are there.

If you're not yet using OrdoLux, book a demo and we'll walk you through the private client workflows — along with anything else on the platform you want to see.

See all features → | Private Client overview →