You have looked for your passport at six in the morning. You have looked for the boiler certificate on the day the boiler broke. You have looked for a birth certificate you were certain was in the drawer, then the other drawer, then the loft.
Everyone has a system. A folder in the bureau, a box on top of the wardrobe, an envelope marked IMPORTANT that hasn't been opened since 2014. The system works until the moment you actually need it, which is always the moment you have the least patience for it.
myLawdit is one room. Locked, organised, and yours.
Your password gets you to the door. A code from your phone, which changes every thirty seconds, gets you through it. Somebody who steals your password still cannot get in — this is the same protection your bank uses, and it is not optional here.
You set it up once. After that it takes a few seconds.
Most of the value is while you are alive. Renewing a passport, remortgaging, claiming on insurance, filling in a school form, proving who you are to somebody who wants three documents you last saw two houses ago — all of it becomes a search that ends in under a minute.
The other value arrives later, and matters more. When someone dies, their family spends weeks hunting for paperwork while grieving. Nobody knows which bank, which pension, whether there was a policy. Your executors open one room and find everything, arranged, with your own note at the top telling them where to start.
We store it. We do not read it, sell it, or mine it. We are a firm of solicitors bound by professional obligations of confidentiality and regulated by the SRA — not a technology company monetising what you put in.
One section of the room works differently from the rest. Passwords, seed phrases and anything else that would let someone act as you are encrypted on your own device, with a passphrase that never reaches our servers.
We hold it. We cannot open it. Neither can anyone who breaks into our systems, and neither can a court order directed at us — there is nothing for us to hand over but ciphertext.
The trade is honest and worth stating plainly: if you lose that passphrase, what is inside is gone permanently. We cannot reset it, because a system we could reset is a system somebody else could break. You receive a printed recovery kit, and we recommend it is sealed and stored with the original of your will.
[Security specification to be completed by Sachin: encryption in transit, encryption at rest, hosting location, backup regime, the client-side encryption scheme used for the sealed section, and the process by which executors are granted access. Do not publish placeholder claims.]
Twelve folders, in a fixed order. Nothing has to be filled in at once — most people start with the first two and add the rest over time.
The single most useful thing in the room. One short letter, written by you, telling whoever opens this what they are looking at and what to do first.
Who to contact first · Where the original will is held · Who your executors and attorneys are · Anything you want said before they read further · The date you last reviewed everything
Birth certificate · Adoption certificate · Passport and previous passports · Driving licence · National Insurance number · Marriage or civil partnership certificate · Decree absolute or dissolution order · Change of name deed · Naturalisation or citizenship documents · Certificates of death for family members whose estates touch yours
Copy of your will (the original stays with us) · Any codicils · Letter of wishes · Property and financial affairs LPA · Health and welfare LPA · Any enduring power of attorney made before October 2007 · Trust deeds · Deeds of variation · Funeral wishes · Organ donation decision
Title deeds and Land Registry title number · Mortgage offer and statements · Lease and freehold documents · Declaration of trust · Tenancy agreements · Buildings and contents insurance · Energy performance certificate · Planning permissions and building regulations approvals · Boiler service and electrical safety certificates · Service charge and ground rent correspondence
Bank and building society accounts · Savings accounts and ISAs · Premium Bonds holder number · Investments and share certificates · State pension forecast · Workplace and private pensions · Annuities · Life assurance · Income protection and critical illness cover · Credit cards · Loans and hire purchase agreements
Unique taxpayer reference · Self assessment returns · P60s and P45s · VAT registration · HMRC correspondence · Council tax · Benefits and tax credits · Record of lifetime gifts, with dates and amounts
NHS number · GP practice details · Current medication and dosages · Allergies · Advance decision to refuse treatment · Advance statement of wishes · Private medical insurance · Dental and optical records · Care plans and care home agreements
Employment contracts · Company incorporation documents · Share certificates · Shareholders' agreement · Partnership agreement · Professional indemnity insurance · Key business contacts · Succession or continuity plan · Business LPA
Utility accounts · Broadband and mobile · Car insurance, travel insurance, pet insurance · Vehicle V5C logbook · MOT and service history · Appliance warranties and receipts · Subscriptions and memberships · Loyalty and reward schemes
Children's birth certificates · School and education records · Guardianship arrangements · Care arrangements for anyone who relies on you · Instructions for pets and the vet's details · Anything you have promised somebody that isn't written down anywhere else
This folder has two halves that work differently, and the difference matters.
The open half — what we can see and help with
Email accounts · Cloud storage · Social media accounts, and what you want done with each: memorialised, deleted, handed over, or left alone · Domain names and websites · Devices, and where the physical keys or recovery kits are kept · Subscriptions still taking payment
For each social media account, the useful thing is not the password. It is a recorded decision and a configured legacy tool:
These are the routes the platforms themselves provide. They give your executors authorised access, which nothing else does. Setting them up takes a couple of minutes each and we will walk you through it.
Also record which password manager you use and who holds emergency access to it. That is where day-to-day credentials belong.
The sealed half — what we hold but cannot open
Some things have no legacy tool and no other route. For those, the vault includes a sealed section, encrypted on your own device with a passphrase that never reaches us.
We cannot read it. We cannot reset it. If you lose the passphrase, nobody — including us, including a court — can recover what is inside. That is the point: it is the only arrangement under which a solicitor should hold live credentials at all.
You receive a printed recovery kit when you set it up. We recommend it is sealed and stored with the original of your will, which we already hold, so the two halves of the arrangement sit in the same place.
Cryptoassets
Record what you hold and where it is custodied. Seed phrases and private keys belong in the sealed section or nowhere. If the key is lost the asset is gone permanently, and no grant of probate, court order or claim against us recovers it.
One honest warning about passwords
A password is not a right of access. Platform terms almost always prohibit sharing credentials, and an executor logging in as you may be committing an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, whatever a will says. The sealed section exists because sometimes there is no better option — not because it is the better option. Configure the legacy tools first, and treat credentials as the fallback.
Solicitor · Accountant · Financial adviser · Executors · Attorneys · GP · Employer · Funeral director · Anyone who would need to be told
The folder that isn't paperwork. Photographs · Letters · Voice recordings and video messages · Family history and family tree · Recipes · The story behind particular objects, so the person inheriting them knows why they mattered
One short letter telling whoever opens this what they're looking at. It takes ten minutes and it's the most useful thing in the room.
Create your room Ask us about it first