Nice to see you… but what if we cannot meet

Guidance on how Wright & Crawford can help you during times of Social Distancing

We are all familiar with the idea of video conferencing with people on the other side of the country. You would not have thought about doing that for someone who lived locally to our office. The Solicitors at Wright & Crawford have always taken pride in the personal service we have delivered to clients through the generations. That has meant face to face meetings either when you come to our office of we travel to you. That currently cannot happen because of the unique times we are living in.

We have adapted to the challenges we face and are helping existing clients and taking instructions from new clients remotely. If you need our help at this time we are here for you. We will be able to talk with you by telephone as normal. For certain work our professional obligations require us to “see” you and to “see” paperwork. Don’t worry. If you have a mobile telephone we will be able to deal with those situations using video call apps.

We are helping clients right now this way. We still need to comply with our client identification obligations for new clients. This can be done initially by viewing you presenting your ID paperwork close to your phone camera so we can see that it is you. That enables us to get started to do the work you need us to do.

We can do this for any type of new work. However we thought it would be helpful to provide guidance on specific areas of work. We have received a number of inquiries about making Powers of Attorney at this time especially for people who are self-isolating. This can still be done thanks to helpful clarification from the Law Society of Scotland on how to deliver our service to you in that situation. We can always speak with you by telephone but we do need to “see” you for certain things. We can take instructions via video call. We can post or e-mail documents to you for review. We are able to observe and see you sign paperwork via video call. Provided that someone can deliver the original signed Power of Attorney to us the same day as it is signed, your Solicitor can complete the Certificate which accompanies your Power of Attorney and upload this to the Public Guardian for registration.

All of our existing professional obligations remain and if we are in any doubt about capacity to grant a Power of Attorney we require to seek medical opinion. If we do not think someone has capacity to grant a Power of Attorney we cannot act for you. We can however act for another person to have a guardian appointed and one of our Solicitors specialises in this area of law.

If you have any questions about this or any other matter at this time please contact your usual Wright & Crawford contact or use our contact details.

We are in this together and together we will continue to service the legal needs of our community.