Should You Appoint a Professional Attorney in Your LPA?

February 2025

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a valuable and versatile legal document that can play a key role in your future planning. Whatever stage of life you’re in, we think it can be very reassuring to know you have all eventualities covered.

By putting LPAs in place to cover any future finance and healthcare needs, you can be sure that your wishes would be followed should you no longer be able to make decisions about those things for yourself. This is true whether this is a temporary condition – perhaps after an emergency surgery – or a more permanent decline. Whatever the circumstances, the attorneys you have appointed would legally be able to step in to handle affairs on your behalf.

If you’re unfamiliar with LPAs, you can read more about why you might need one here.

What does it mean to appoint a professional attorney?

When you make an LPA, you will need to nominate at least one individual to act as your ‘attorney’ should it be necessary for the LPA come into effect. Your attorney (or attorneys) will have the legal right to handle things such as your finances or important healthcare decisions on your behalf. The exact types of decisions your attorneys can make for you will depend on the powers you have chosen to grant them.

In some situations, you might decide to appoint an attorney who would be acting in a professional capacity. This usually means asking a solicitor if they would act on your behalf.

If you were to appoint someone to act in their professional capacity, this would be reflected in the LPA with a ‘professional charging clause’. This will involve agreeing that the solicitor will have the right to charge for these services at their usual hourly rate. The professional charging clause will usually give the professional attorney the power to seek payment for their invoices from any accounts they will be managing on your behalf. 

What are the benefits of professional attorneys?

There can be significant benefits to appointing a professional attorney in your LPA.

These include:

• Knowledge, skills and experience. A specialist solicitor will have a great deal of experience in dealing with matters in this area. This means you can be confident that anything they handled on your behalf would be in very good hands. You might be particularly keen to take advantage of this if you feel that your affairs are likely to be complex and/or involve a fair number of legal decisions.
• Reliability. Depending on your personal circumstances, you may feel that you would benefit from the reliability of a professional attorney. Not everyone has family members or close friends that they would feel able to trust with sensitive legal, financial or healthcare decisions.
• Easing the burden. You might feel that it is too much to ask family members or close friends to take on the responsibility of handling your affairs on your behalf. This might be a particular concern if you know those closest to you are likely to be having a difficult time dealing with the day-to-day practicalities of your declining health, or perhaps even their own health problems. Appointing a professional attorney can help to ease any pressure on your loved ones.
• Legal protection. Taking on the role of an attorney is a big responsibility. Attorneys have a legal obligation to carry out their duties in a certain way. If they don’t do this – or if mistakes are made – they may find themselves legally and financially responsible. You might wish to avoid any risk to those closest to you by appointing a professional attorney who will be very well versed in their legal obligations.
• Not all family relationships are straight-forward. If you are concerned that tensions may arise between family members in the course of carrying out your wishes, you may decide that it would be better to appoint an independent and impartial professional.

 Are there disadvantages of appointing a professional attorney? 

No solution is perfect, and there are some downsides to appointing a professional attorney. Before you make a decision on this, it’s important to make sure you’re clear on these as well as the benefits.

The main concern in regards to appointing a professional attorney in your LPA is likely to be the issue of cost. If you are appointing someone in their professional capacity, they will have the right to be paid for the work they do.

This will be made clear in the professional charging clause in each individual LPA, but the professional will usually charge at their usual hourly rate for any and all work they carry out on your behalf. This includes complex legal supervision (such as overseeing the sale of property or the management of a business) as well as more day-to-day matters (such as ensuring bills are paid on time).

You will also need to consider whether you are appointing a named individual professional attorney or whether you are appointing a legal firm as a whole. Different firms have different policies on this matter (at Roche Legal, our policy is that only individual named directors can be appointed as professional attorneys, not the firm as a whole). You will want to be clear on exactly who you are appointing, and what the impact on your LPA would be if the individual solicitor moved to a different firm or retired.

Finally, though there are significant benefits to appointing a professional attorney in terms of making legal and financial decisions on your behalf, it may be less appropriate to appoint a professional attorney to make health and care decisions. This is something you might wish to seek personalised advice on. 

What’s right for you? 

Making an LPA – and deciding who to appoint as your attorney – is a very personal and individualised choice. The right attorney for you will depend on a wide range of factors, including:

• The type of decisions you’ll require an attorney to make on your behalf.
• Your personal circumstances and family relationships.
• Your financial situation.

If you would like to explore whether appointing a professional attorney is the right choice for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We are always on hand to guide you through the whole process of making legal plans for the future.