Top of the class?
Date: 24 February 2012
Authors: Jon Robins
Issue: Vol 162, Issue 7502
Categories: Opinion, Legal services, Marketing
One feature of the post-Legal Services Act 2007 landscape is the proliferation of comparethemarket.com-style websites designed to help consumers navigate through the newly-liberalised legal services marketplace.
Earlier this month the Legal Services Consumer Panel (LSCP) published a largely positive report assessing some 16 sites (including www.lawcomparison.co.uk, www.lawyerlocator.co.uk, www.legalcompare.com, www.legallybetter.com, and www.legallyconfused.com). The LSCP research categorised specialist websites into four types: directories; feedback; referral; and price comparison sites.
“Comparison websites are a welcome new feature in legal services as they could make it easier for consumers to choose lawyers and boost competition,” commented its chair Elisabeth Davies. This came in marked contrast to a sniffy report from the Law Society towards the end of last year which was, no doubt, informed by the controversy over solicitorsfromhell.co.uk.
Reluctant acceptance?
Chancery Lane begrudgingly conceded there was “benefit in probing” (presumably with a very long stick) the comparison website model before accepting it as “a valid mechanism”. It concluded that there were factors that need to be discussed and understood before the model might be “welcomed” into the legal services market.
Whether the solicitors’ professional body welcomes such sites or not is beside the point. According to the LSCP, only one in every hundred clients who bought legal services in the last two years used them and, somewhat bizarrely, law firms were ignoring referrals. The research found that firms ignored eight out of 10 online referral requests for a simple will. Davies sees this as “a massive own goal” for the profession.
If one or two websites succeed in establishing a truly credible presence—and I think they will—it won’t be anything to do with lawyers giving them their blessing. It will be down to demand from consumers and, in part, a demand driven by a failure on the part of the profession.
Helping the powerless?
There has been much research on what the LSCP has previously called the “feeling of powerlessness” felt by consumers when it comes to having to identify a lawyer to assist with a particular problem. That quote comes from its Quality in Legal Services report (November 2010).
People don’t shop around for lawyers. Innovative websites have a role to play in unlocking competition in a newly liberalised legal services market. The new report acknowledges the debate over the suitability of comparison sites, but says its “starting point” is that they are likely to have “an increasing influence on consumer choice and so the focus as the market emerges should be on maximising the benefits while protecting consumers from the potential risks”.
Time to check a professional?
I asked Checkatrade—an online vetting service set up by local businessman Kevin Byrne after a freak tornado in West Sussex exposed the foibles of willing traders from near and far—why they were now branching out into professional services, including the law, with www.checkaprofessional.com. The idea behind the new site is to offer consumers details of companies that have been vetted and monitored through customer feedback.
“It is about giving consumers a more informed choice. We cannot build walls, we can’t do the plumbing, what we do is thoroughly vet everybody who comes through to us,” says Checkaprofessional’s business development manager Lisa Beale. She reckons some 280,000 consumers checked out their site last month and some 7,084 trade and services have agreed to be monitored. Why?
“It is about making themselves transparent so that it’s easy for consumers. [Businesses] need to understand that they are in competition with other businesses and market themselves to reach out to consumers in such a way that they are truly approachable.” Beale has already had first-hand experience of professional resistance from lawyers. She recounts going into solicitors’ offices to discuss Checkaprofessional and feeling uncomfortable. “If I’d come to see them about a divorce or something that was sensitive to me, I do not feel that their bedside manner would be particularly inviting,” she reflects.
The wrong fit?
The LSCP report notes an industry perception that such websites and legal services simply aren’t a good fit. More specifically, it acknowledges concerns that the market is “too fragmented”, consumers need legal services too infrequently, and even that the profession is “culturally averse” to marketing.
While the LSCP acknowledges such challenges are real (although exaggerated in some cases), they are likely to be eroded by the unstoppable march of alternative business structures and “rising consumer power”.
The panel has advised the Legal Services Board to develop the voluntary adoption of good practice standards and has floated the idea of the accreditation of comparison sites. But it has also challenged the profession—in particular, the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)—to open up professional registers so that comparison sites have access to the empirical data (names, addresses, details of accreditation and panel membership etc). “It might be that there is a commercial value in the ownership of that data by the Law Society or SRA,” Steve Brooker, consumer panel manager at LSCP tells me. “But it must be in the greater public interest that such data is disseminated—provided it is done in a responsible way. Plus, if it is withheld then we would be concerned about the potential restriction of competition.” Quite.
Jon Robins is a NLJ columnist & editor of www.thejusticegap.com.
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