Why quality matters

The Bar Standards Board, Solicitors Regulation Authority, and other approved regulators could be encouraged to use price comparison and customer review websites as part of a “toolkit of regulatory interventions” to ensure quality in legal services.

Regulators may be encouraged to publish complaints in order to promote transparency, while lawyers could be required to undergo extra training or gain accreditation. The new measures—unveiled in the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) paper, Quality in Legal Services —were made in response to findings by its Consumer Panel, a group of independent lay people, that the specialised nature of the legal profession makes it difficult for clients to gauge quality. The measures will be introduced this year.

The LSB will also commission research to identify risks to quality in the legal services market. Chris Kenny, chief executive of the LSB, said: “The Consumer Panel has identified quality assurance as an important priority in consumer protection.”

Jon Robins, director of legal research company Jures said: “The benefits of increased competition in a newly liberalised legal services market are going to be limited if the only criterion that consumers have to make a choice between providers is price. The Consumer Panel report is very significant and nailed the point that users of legal services have no grasp of ‘quality’ in legal services—for a number of different reasons, not least legal advice tends to be a once or twice in a lifetime experience or a distress purchase. It’s important for the profession but more significantly it’s important for consumers that they build a greater understanding of what is a good or bad service.”