Finalists: Bird & Bird; CMS (highly commended); Womble Bond Dickinson.

Solicitors for the Elderly (SFE) and PR firm Stand Agency emerged on top in the PR, communications and brand awareness category, following their efforts to pressure the government into scrapping a proposal to increase probate fees, which were widely viewed as an unfair stealth tax.

The suggested change, buried in the small print of the 2017 Spring Budget, would have seen as much as a 9,200% rise in fees for some estates, with SFE subsequently mounting a campaign to argue that the government had not considered the impact of the proposals on the public.

That meant communicating to the media and public why it thought the fees were unfair (notably that the size of those fees would impel the elderly and vulnerable to take risky steps to reduce their assets), and rallying support from a wide pool of stakeholders including local MPs across the UK to put pressure on the government to ditch its plans.

Having secured front-page splashes in two national newspapers (The Times and the Daily Mail) and gathered almost 40,000 signatures in an online petition, the government backed down and quietly shelved the plans.

Since then, SFE has continued to wage its campaign to ensure the government is not tempted to revive the probate fee hike.

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