1 / LPA Market Research
legalhelp.
legalhelp.
Internal · Market Research
LPA —
market research.
The process, who currently does it and how, the commercial landscape, and what a product would look like.
Slide 2
The process
Slide 3
Current market
Slide 4
Commercial opportunity
Slide 5
Addressable market + product
01The process
How an LPA goes from decision to registered document.
Five steps. The gov.uk portal covers step 2 only. Steps 3 and 4 — certificate provider and signing sequence — are where 8.9% of applications fail and why most people pay a solicitor.
Step 1 · Donor
Make the decisions
The donor (the person creating the LPA) decides who their attorneys are and what powers they hold. In practice: joint appointment (both must agree on everything) vs joint-and-several (either can act alone) is a consequential choice most people don't understand without guidance. If one attorney later loses capacity, joint-only arrangements can freeze. Solicitors typically spend 30–60 minutes explaining this alone.
LegalHelp: explain the choices
Step 2 · Donor or professional
Complete the form
The donor fills in the OPG-prescribed form — themselves on gov.uk, or a solicitor does it on their behalf. The gov.uk portal handles this reasonably well and for free. This is the only step the free tool properly addresses. Free-text instruction fields are where people unwittingly write unlawful or contradictory clauses.
Gov portal covers this step
Step 3 · Donor's responsibility
Find a certificate provider (CP)
The CP certifies — in a private, face-to-face meeting with the donor alone, without attorneys present — that the donor understands the document, has mental capacity, and is not being coerced. Who qualifies: a professional (solicitor, GP, social worker) or someone who has known the donor personally for 2+ years. Who doesn't: any family member, the attorneys themselves, their relatives, anyone living with the donor.

Is this a real problem or just friction? Primarily a knowledge problem. Most people can find a CP in five minutes once they know the rules — a neighbour, a colleague, an old friend. The issue is their first instinct is usually to ask a family member, who is disqualified. It's genuinely harder for isolated elderly donors whose social circle is mostly family or fellow attorneys. For those cases, a local solicitor acting as professional CP costs £50–95 for a short meeting — expensive but a clean solution.

This is where a product has a real choice: explain who qualifies and let the user sort it (form guide, lower price), or facilitate CP sourcing directly (managed service, higher price — and the line between competing with the portal vs competing with the solicitor).
Knowledge problem more than logistics problem
Step 4 · All parties
Sign in the prescribed order
Why this order exists: the OPG requires it to prevent coercion. The CP must certify the donor's independent decision before the attorneys are formally involved. Donor signs first. CP signs second. Attorneys sign third. Each signature must be witnessed by a separate adult who is not a beneficiary.

In practice: parties are often in different locations. Coordinating multiple signatures, witnesses, and dates without error is genuinely difficult without guidance.

What rejection looks like: ~10 weeks after posting, the OPG returns the document with a letter explaining the error. The fee is not refunded. You cannot correct the existing document — you must redo the entire signing sequence from scratch: new CP meeting, new signatures, new witnesses, new submission, new £92 fee.
Top rejection cause — 133,760 in 2024
Step 5 · Donor
Register with OPG and wait
Post the signed forms to the Office of the Public Guardian with the registration fee: £92 per LPA, £184 for both. Current processing time: ~49 working days (~10 weeks). The OPG returns the stamped, registered document by post. Only at this point does the LPA have legal effect.
Straightforward once execution is correct
Legalhelp · InternalOPG Annual Report 2024–25 · OPG rejection data · UKLPA guidanceLPA — the process
02Current market
~685,000 people per year. How they currently do it.
1.37m annual applications = ~685k unique individuals (most do both types). The market is real. There is no Farewill equivalent — no one has built a dominant digital LPA brand.
Solicitor~70%
~480,000 people/year. Pays £300–1,000+ per LPA. Often triggered by a health event in the family or bundled with a will or property transaction — the solicitor brings it up.
Why 61% prefer face-to-face: an LPA grants another person control over your finances and healthcare if you lose capacity. That's not a decision people take lightly. They want a professional to sit across a table, explain the consequences, and confirm it's right. It's also a document most people only make once — they don't shop around.
How you would build trust digitally: Rob Rinder as a named barrister-backed brand is the most direct answer — court-adjacent credibility that wills don't have. A named solicitor review on the output (not a chatbot, a real person) is the second lever. Clear step-by-step explanation at every decision point reduces the anxiety that drives face-to-face preference.
How difficult in practice: harder than wills. The core face-to-face requirement is the CP meeting — which cannot be digitised. The product can guide everything around it, but the donor and CP must still physically meet. This means the product reduces failure risk but doesn't eliminate the human coordination. Older demographics with lower digital confidence are also harder to serve digitally than the will-buying demographic.
Source: OPG modernisation docs (70% figure) · LSCP Tracker 2024 Med conf.
DIY via gov.uk~30%
~205,000 people/year. Free form completion. User still has to handle CP and signing themselves.
This is the rejection-prone segment. 8.9% of LPAs are rejected — mostly signing errors and CP issues — costing ~£5m in wasted fees annually.
Why they struggle: the portal solves the form. It doesn't solve Steps 3 and 4 — where the failures happen.
Source: OPG Annual Report 2024–25 · MoneyWeek rejection data High conf.
Commercial servicesSmall
WUHLD (£100), Co-op digital (£120), Kwil (£170), Octopus Legacy (£699 all-in). All charge for what the gov portal doesn't provide.
No published volume from any provider. Market is real but fragmented. No company has scaled into this the way Farewill scaled wills.
This is the gap. The productised digital middle-tier — better than DIY, cheaper than a solicitor — does not have a dominant brand.
Source: provider websites June 2026 High conf.
The Farewill comparison: Farewill built a dominant will brand by productising what solicitors charged £200-400 for, at £90-100. No one has done the equivalent for LPA — a product that sits between "free gov portal with 8.9% failure rate" and "£400+ solicitor." That tier is currently occupied by small, unfamiliar names.
Legalhelp · InternalLPA — how people cope
03Commercial opportunity
Case for and case against.
Where a commercial product could add value — and the factors working against it.
The case for breaking in
~480k people/year going through solicitors at £300-1,000+. They are already paying. A better-priced digital product that handles CP guidance and signing coordination could pull a meaningful slice.
No dominant digital LPA brand exists. The Farewill equivalent for LPA has not been built. The productised middle tier is currently small, fragmented, and unrecognisable to consumers.
Rob Rinder's brand solves the trust problem. 61% prefer face-to-face because they don't trust a digital product with something this important. A barrister-backed brand changes the calculus. This is actually a better fit for Rob than wills — LPA is court-adjacent territory.
22% of will customers already buy LPA services in the same engagement (IRN 2025). As a cross-sell, CAC is ~£0. The economics are strong at zero acquisition cost.
No solicitor legally required. Cost of delivery is lower than wills — non-lawyer review, no drafted clauses. Better gross margin at a lower price point.
The case against
61% prefer face-to-face. This is the highest face-to-face preference of any legal service. Digital LPA is not a natural choice for the core audience. Overcoming this requires strong trust signal and good UX — not easy.
The gov portal already does the easy part for free. Form completion is solved. A commercial product only justifies its price if it clearly solves Steps 3 and 4 — CP and signing. If it doesn't, it's competing with free.
LPA alone is not a scalable standalone business. The same paid acquisition problem as wills: at £79-99, D2C paid search loses money. Works only via cross-sell or partnerships.
The product is operationally harder than wills. Signing coordination requires tracking multiple parties. CP guidance potentially requires a matching service. More complex to build and deliver.
Conclusion
LPA is not a starter product. It is a cross-sell. Once registered, an LPA is valid for life — there is no repeat purchase, no subscription, no retention dynamic. As a standalone product, it has the same acquisition problem as wills (paid search loses money, face-to-face preference is 61%, awareness building from scratch is expensive). Even at 2% capture of the 480k solicitor market, that is ~£864k revenue — not a business on its own. As a cross-sell to will customers at near-zero CAC, it is the highest-margin transaction in the portfolio. The right sequencing: wills as the door, LPA as the second conversation once trust is already established.
Legalhelp · InternalLSCP Tracker 2024 · IRN 2025 consumer survey (n=680) · Legal Services BoardLPA — is there headway
04Addressable market + product
The addressable market and what the product would be.
LPA as a cross-sell from wills rather than a standalone product — who we can reach, at what volume, and what we'd build.
The addressable market
Primary: LegalHelp will customers. 22% of will clients buy LPA in the same engagement (IRN 2025, n=680). At 1,000 will customers, that's ~220 LPA purchases at ~£83 margin each = £18,260 additional margin at zero marginal CAC.
Secondary: DIY users who failed or are afraid of failing. 133,760 rejections in 2024. A product that credibly prevents rejection has a concrete, quantifiable value proposition: avoid losing £92 and starting again.
Not prioritised: the 70% solicitor route. Converting face-to-face LPA customers to digital requires significant trust infrastructure and Rob's active promotion. Possible longer-term but not the first market.
Size: if LegalHelp sells 5,000 wills/year, 22% attachment = ~1,100 LPA pairs/year at £83 each = ~£91,000 additional margin with no additional CAC spend. Not huge, but not trivial on top of the will margin.
What the product would be
Decision guidance — explain the attorney structure choices in plain English before touching the form. This is the value the gov portal doesn't provide.
Validated form completion — guided entry with real-time checks against OPG rejection reasons. Not just the form — catching errors before they cost £92.
Certificate provider guidance — who qualifies, how to ask them, what they do. Potentially a directory or matching service if the user has no suitable person.
Signing instructions — step-by-step for the prescribed order, clear enough that a non-lawyer can follow it without failing.
What it is not: not drafted clauses (it's a government form). No solicitor legally required. Non-lawyer review is sufficient. Simpler than wills to build, faster to launch.
Price: £79–99 per LPA (user pays £92 OPG fee separately). The open design question — does it include CP matching or just guidance? — determines the upper end.
Legalhelp · InternalIRN 2025 consumer survey · OPG Annual Report 2024–25 · Legal Services Board · provider pricing June 2026LPA — addressable market + product
05Starting product verdict
Are wills or LPA the right place to start?
Neither is a clear starting product in isolation. One is conditional on distribution being solved first. The other is definitively a follow-on.
Wills — conditional
The product works. The unit economics work (~£65 gross margin). The problem is acquiring customers cheaply enough. Farewill raised $39m, charged £90-100, never cracked direct acquisition, sold at 15% of peak.
Viable as a starting product only if distribution is already solved — Rob's partnerships, charity schemes, employer benefits. If the plan is Google Ads and SEO from scratch, it's Farewill's problem repeated.
Also once-and-done. No recurring revenue. Needs to be the door to a bigger estate spine (LPA, probate referral) to be a real business — not a product on its own.
LPA — no
Once-and-done. 61% face-to-face preference. Same acquisition economics as wills. Harder to deliver operationally.
Cross-sell only. At near-zero CAC as a follow-on from wills, it is the highest-margin transaction in the portfolio. As a standalone product, it is not viable.
ACT products — stronger case
ACT products (court defence, parking, deposit disputes) have structurally better starting economics. The user already has a problem — they can't do nothing. That urgency drives conversion in a way Sorted products don't.
County court defence specifically: outcome verifiable within months, premium pricing justified, no good free alternative, and Rob Rinder is a barrister — court is the most authentic brand match in the portfolio.
800,000+ county court claims per year. Defendants usually overwhelmed. No dominant digital product exists.
The framing
Neither wills nor LPA is a clean standalone starting product. Wills is viable if and only if the distribution question (Rob's partnerships, charity model) is answered before building — not after. LPA follows wills, it doesn't lead. The ACT side — specifically county court defence — has better starting economics: a user who already has a problem, a verifiable outcome, and Rob's barrister brand used authentically. The logical sequence: ACT products to build volume and prove the model. Sorted products (wills then LPA) once distribution relationships are in place.
Legalhelp · InternalStarting product verdict