In Eastern England, an elderly man owned a large farm much of which he had previously sold off for housing. He also sold an option agreement on further land and entered into contracts linking back to these earlier deals. He then became ill and died. The beneficiaries were being pressured to sign a whole raft of documents relating to these past deals and were becoming increasingly worried. They quite naturally did not understand the complex detail of what they were already contracted to and the implications of signing or not signing these new documents. It was also difficult for the beneficiaries to understand the agreements themselves together with all their requirements.
None of the parties to the documents had in the past even spoken to each other! Nick Woolley, together with their solicitors got them all to the table, persuaded them to join his clients in signing up and within pressing time limits. He won the confidence of the clients, the respect of the other parties and laid the foundations for further successful tranches of the overall development. It was difficult to quantify the costs and benefits of Woolley’s involvement but it was almost certainly well in excess of £500,000 for the initial development tranche alone. Woolley’s total fee for this stage was in the order of £25,000.