Shopping Around for Lawyers?

Jon Robins at Jures has produced a research report, entitled "Shopping Around", on what consumers want from the new legal services market. (HT to the Times.) It's based on a YouGov survey of 2000 adults in England and Wales. The research is therefore prospective examining what consumers might want after the alternative business structures come into play in September 2011.

Asked if they would prefer to buy their legal services from Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Barclays Bank, or Virgin, consumers plumped in the main for Marks & Spencer over the others. But don't think this was an overwhelming win as only 14% were drawn by a known brand.

According the research the prime criteria for consumers were quality of service and fixed prices (60% and 35% respectively). Brand name and cheapness scored low.

Before lawyers think they are now coasting to an easy life post-ABS take note of the question:

• Have you ever sought legal advice from a lawyer or solicitor? If the answer is 'Yes', in your opinion did that advice represent good value for money?
• Answer: Almost half of clients felt their experience of lawyers represented poor value for money.

Since this is based on something which doesn't yet exist, if anything it tells us that consumers are in the dark about the changes coming down the line. Only one supermarket is offering legal services, the Coop, Its website is not easy to navigate nor is taking off.

I would imagine that if Tesco and Marks & Spencer do offer legal services it will be as part of a package, maybe rolled into a financial services offering which they already do via their credit cards and insurance policies. Legal services in themselves are not an inspiring buy: they are approximately on the same level of utilities. You need them but you resent the prices charged. So it might be possible for the supermarkets to market these services more attractively than they are at present.


The Jures research does show that this is not an easy one-way drift for Tesco law. It will have to work hard if it is to wean consumers away from traditional suppliers. The research also shows by implication that for lawyers to remain in the game they are going to have to improve their services, retool their approach, and radically rethink how they charge for their work. None of this is too difficult if they can think imaginatively.


Well, they have 15 months left to do it in. That's when the ABSs start. Start thinking!

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(Thanks to I Flash Ready)

Shopping Around for Lawyers?

Tesco Law in a Wig and Gown

Are solicitors endangered? James Dunning has an insightful post on this at his blog, An Inside Take from the Outside.

He advances his argument on the basis of the changes made in the regulation of barristers. Dunning says:

Last week though, in my humble opinion, the earth moved as the Bar Standards Board voted to allow barristers

• to work in partnership with other barristers
• to work in partnership with lawyers
• to invest in law firms
• to practice in more than one capacity
• to investigate and collect evidence, take witness statements in civil and criminal case, advise suspects at the police station and conduct correspondence

The Law Society is busy considering the relative merits and demerits of referral fees.  Meanwhile the Bar Council has just voted to allow barristers to steal a sizeable proportion of law firms’ daily sustenance.

I agree with Dunning the earth is moving and solicitors should be checking their earthquake insurance.

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Tesco Law in a Wig and Gown

Do You Know What Lawyers Do?

(Thanks to rutty)

When I lived in the East End of London, I acted as a kind of bush lawyer for my neighbours. All sorts of problems came up: how to keep disability benefits going; how to get a new license for a pub; how to deal with a stolen credit card; and what to do when a decree nisi hadn't been converted into a decree absolute with the result no benefits could be claimed.

All of these people avoided going to lawyers. Lawyers were expensive, remote, and alien. I wasn't.

So when the Legal Services Board published research recently with the headline:

68% of Consumers Have "Little or No Knowledge" of What Lawyers Do

I wasn't surprised. (Hat tip to Charon QC.)

According to the LSB's research more than 60% of respondents had used legal services, and 53% of them within the past 5 years. Did they shop around for the right lawyer? No. Only 14% did that. The purchase of legal services appears to be crisis buying rather than pleasure-based purchasing.

Of course, the above applies mainly to individual consumers rather than business users. Having said that I should modify this statement because small and medium enterprises (SMEs) do have difficulty in finding appropriate and cheap legal services. This is why groups such as the Federation of Small Businesses run legal advice schemes for their members.

The basic problem with most research in this area is that our definitions of legal needs are fuzzy and imperfect. Early studies by the American Bar Foundation showed that the public only obtained legal services for a small proportion of their legal needs. Indeed, a widely-quoted paperon the life histories of disputes, for example, showed that the most common form of dispute resolution is "lumping it".

Bert Kritzer looked at the studies on legal needs in a 2008 paper, Examining the Real Demand for Legal Services. He identified the main problem as a lack of clear baseline data. We need to survey the entire population. There are indications in the extant research (in the US) that cost is not the determinative factor in the use of legal services, but rather lack of knowledge.

Lack of knowledge comes in two forms. First, there is the lack of understanding that a problem might have a legal aspect, eg. stopping of welfare benefits. Second, there is a lack of knowing that a lawyer might be able to help in this situation.

It is these types of knowledge deficits that open opportunities for ambulance chasers, debt consolidators, and claims handling companies who are eager to prise money out of clients than solving their problems.

Lawyers are to blame if consumers don't understand what they do. Despite changes in legal procedure the abandonment of legal Latin (in the UK), the major growth is in the use of ombudsmen and other informal resolution procedures. Institutions that don't require the intercession of lawyers.

And this is where Tesco Law will make its impact. With simplicity, ease of use, friendly representatives, transparent costings, extended opening hours, ready communication, and a firm quality control.

At the moment most lawyers haven't a clue how to respond to that and that is assuming they are aware there is a problem.

Do You Know What Lawyers Do?