Yesterday the SRA revealed the first three Alternative Business Structures (ABS) to be licensed by it.  Legal Futures carried a report on it.

 The three are Co-Op Legal Services (no surprise there then), John Welch and Stammers, a high street firm in Oxfordshire and Lawbridge Solicitors Limited, a Sidcup based solo based firm of solicitors.  In the case of the latter two, the main reason for converting to ABS status was to allow a non-lawyer practice manager  into the firm and, in the case of Lawbridge, to allow the wife of the sole practitioner to take a shareholding.  All a bit underwhelming really.

Peter Cooke

As Peter Cooke said in The Secret Policeman’s Ball, whilst playing a prophet of doom expecting the world to end at any minute: “Not quite the mighty conflagration we’d been banking on”.

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The only stat you’ll ever need …

Why?

That is the horrifyingly large number of people who “would actively not engage the law firm or provider and would tell others not to engage them as well”, according to a mystery shopping survey by CXINLAW. In other words, 45% or nearly one in two telephone enquiries to the 100 law firms surveyed, put potential clients off instructing that firm.

It should be required reading for every law firm.  You can access a copy by clicking here (may require payment of a fee). The Law Society Gazette carried a report here  and Legal Futures here.

The lesson from the report is that what is of primary importance to clients is the  experience, not the law. It’s basic stuff really: no one wants to be treated like  a nuisance or made to feel like their work isn’t important, especially if they are paying for the privilege.

 It reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story of the wealthy client in a meeting with the senior partner of a large City firm, being given some home truths by the lawyer. “I didn’t come here to be gratuitously insulted” says the client, to which the lawyer replies “It isn’t gratuitous”.

Law firms need to appreciate that quality is in the eye of the client, not the lawyer.

More to come on this report in due course. Maybe even a podcast if I get round to it.

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The myth that lawyers hate technology came up in a webinar in which I was involved recently. It was titled “New Thinking in Legal Services” and was organised by Jon Busby of Epoq and I was invited along to contribute together with solicitor Sally Holdway of legal consultancy Legal Edge.

It was a wide ranging discussion on the future of legal service provision post-LSA.  About two-thirds of the way through Jon bowled his doosra at us: why do lawyers hate technology?

But, hang on I thought, do they?

It is common to charge lawyers with all sorts of crimes – too expensive, too aloof, lacking focus on the needs of customers (or clients, whichever way you want to put it), not being accessible or innovative enough and so on and on.  Not deploying technology is also a common charge. But solicitors aren’t alone. Many other professionals and other service providers are slow as well. And bear in mind that the IT industry hardly covers itself in glory either: unless you’re very technically proficient it is easy as a punter to get quickly lost in jargon.  Indeed, many IT people display all the faults that are often levied against lawyers: not listening to their clients’ needs, imposing solutions that don’t work and charging large sums of money for the privilege.  Of course, IT, like law, doesn’t have to be (and isn’t always) like that.

I don’t think that lawyers as a breed are any more resistant to technology than any other profession and it very much depends what sector of the profession you’re looking at.  Bigger firms have deeper pockets and therefore, more likely, sophisticated IT systems. Smaller firms may have no more than computerised accounts packages to run client account balances and basic book-keeping. That sort of technology is taken for granted these days – is there a law firm out there that doesn’t use computers to run their back-office functions? Some firms that service the volume markets (like personal injury and conveyancing) are highly systematised.  So much so that you don’t need to be a qualified solicitor to do the work – the workflow system will tell you what letter to write next and there will be a precedent copy in the hard drive somewhere.  This works if the cases being put through are capable of being handled that way, or the clients are prepared to receive a service like that.  But leaving that type of work aside, what about the non-commoditisable side of the profession?

On the client facing side most law firms (like most businesses) have a website, although a surprising number do not.  Many firms have rushed into social media.  Why?  For the same reason they got a website: because everyone else has one. But the debate needs to move on beyond websites and social media which, ultimately, are nothing more than forms of window dressing.  They have a fundamentally important place in raising the profile of any business, but once the client has come through the door(be it real or metaphorical) the issue is delivering the right service at the right price at the right time.

This might sound daunting to smaller practices but new products are coming onto the market that would allow even smaller firms to provide a 24/7 service and allow the client to access legal services themselves without necessarily seeing a solicitor. That doesn’t have to be the preserve of large firms these days.  Workflow systems can be purchased off the shelf, or tailored to each firms’ needs, assisting document creation by the fee earner, topping and tailing letters to clients and quick completion of standard documents.   More interestingly, another option is to provide legal services online that allow the client to do the data inputting and create the documents themselves, bringing the Web 2.0 experience directly to the client: the client does all the data input and the software does the rest.  For instance, Epoq have developed an online, white-label, package for creating wills and employment documents (amongst others) where a wide range of standardised legal documents, all of which can be tailored to the client’s needs by the clients themselves at whatever time of day or night, all by answering a series of appropriate questions.

 Another example of a web-based system that may make inroads into Probate practice is the recently launched, “The Law Wizard”, developed by former probate solicitor Tom Hiskey. It allows the individual to draft their own application for probate and also to complete standard letters to banks and utility companies. It is aimed initially at the individual, thus cutting out the law firm, but there’s no reason why these types of system could not be white-labelled, enabling a law firm to offer a wider range of services much more cost effectively. The often unnoticed benefit is that the client is doing all the data input work, which means the law firm doesn’t have to incur resources in doing it themselves.

Criticising such solutions because they de-lawyer the process misses the point.  If anything it re-lawyers the process. The client creates the document and then, if they do not feel comfortable with the document they have created, they seek advice on it. The solicitor adds value with his/her expertise and experience – and can charge properly for the advice. Now that Google and Wikipedia can provide raw information on any topic under the sun, the solicitor can only sell their judgment and experience. As Bananarama sang “It’s not what you do it’s the way that you do it, and that’s what get results” which in this instance means being winning clients and, hopefully, retaining them for future.

In other words it will become more important how you deploy those legal skills than simply the fact you have them that counts. It will be imperative to keep your processes as straightforward and cost effective as possible. That must be the Holy Grail for smaller firms that are squeezed out of their traditional markets by new entrants and volume provider.

So, why don’t law firms make more use of technology? I think there are three reasons;

1. There is a perception that “online” services offered by professional services firms look cheap and devalue the brand. That’s certainly one argument I’ve come across from otherwise sane solicitors: the internet is where you get your bargains, but it isn’t the way to provide quality legal services. Some clients may agree with that view but I suspect they are a diminishing minority. The time will come, if it isn’t here already, when clients will want to access legal services online. The view that the internet is not a place to provide legal services will (and must) go the way of the Dodo, and fast.

1. Solicitors’ firms have been described as the last cottage industry, suffering from under-investment and failing to develop long-term business development strategies, partly caused by having partnership as a business structure, which militates against long-term business development.  In partnerships the emphasis is on taking out profits each year to make a decent living.  This doesn’t encourage long-term planning or investment, especially when most finance has to be secured on partners’ matrimonial homes. The irony is that cloud based systems probably don’t require large capital outlays.

1. The third reason, and the most important one in my view, comes down to something more basic. The fundamental problem for smaller law firms (and this impacts across more issues than just technology) is the lack of time and resource to plan an IT strategy, or a social media strategy, or a marketing strategy or even a business strategy. These are big issues and it is hard to find time for the blue sky thinking when you’re continually having to bail out the boat to stay afloat. I’ve spent most of my career in small law firms acting for individuals and small businesses.  The same solution to these problems is applied all the time; a senior fee earner/partner is delegated to “look after” marketing, or IT or whatever it happens to be.  They also have to get on with fee earning   which, of course is the raison d’etre and comes before all else. Fee income is under pressure all the time, overheads only ever go up and the marketing partner or the tech partner just has to scurry round the wheel ever more quickly to make their targets. Inevitably long term planning gets pushed to the back of the queue.   A better solution would be to employ a dedicated person unconstrained by the need to make fees but bods who don’t earn fees are cost centres and if your bottom line is under pressure the easy move is to cut costs on these peripheral issues.  Except of course these are now fundamentally important issues deserving full attention. However, without someone (let alone a team) dedicated to planning these issues the firm simply doesn’t get the time to stand back and plan.

What is needed most is the time to consider developing a strategy and, of course, you can’t look at one issue in isolation.  A technology strategy has to encompass back office functions, workflow for fee earners and front of house ops – i.e. the website and any social media activity. Mention social media and most people will either groan or get very enthusiastic about Twitter and Facebook. There is most definitely a place for it but social media is not the paramount technology issue.  Reducing cost is and technology ought to be able to help – if you get it right.

I mentioned earlier on about large firms using workflow systems and unqualified staff to sausage process large volumes of claims.  How might that work in litigation where costs and outcomes are unpredictable? The hourly rate business model prices most people out of litigation, unless no win no fee models are used.  For the solicitor running a case on a no win no fee basis you need to be as efficient as possible because you might lose the case at the end of the day.   Risk assessment is clearly key, but so is costs management, which can often get lost in complex and pressured cases.  One answer might be to use project management software, which are commonly used in other industries to monitor costs and progress and to keep within budget and schedule. Are any law firms using them?

The post-LSA world means that firms of all shapes and sizes face unprecedented challenges, particularly on costs.  Time and resource will need to be spent on altering the business model, getting away from the hourly rate and cutting costs to remain competitive. Technology provides an opportunity to address those challenges, and now the time has come to focus on the challenge ahead.

Solicitors Journal 20/3/12

 This article is published today in the  Solicitors Journal (Vol 156,no 11, p. 10-11)

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1. The Future of Legal Technology Last Thursday I went to NetLaw Media’s “Legal Futures 2012...

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Technology is not a magic wand

Last Thursday I went to NetLaw Media’s “Legal Futures 2012 The Future of Legal Technology” conference chaired by legal IT guru Charles Christian.   Brian Inkster’s The Time Blawg has a very full discussion of the whole event – click here to read it.  I won’t reinvent the wheel by repeating what Brian has written about as I just want to just deal with the event’s main underlying theme: how law firms should use technology in their businesses to provide the level of service that tech savvy clients are increasingly demanding, set against a background of increasing client sophistication in the use of IT and the consumerisation of IT devices taking control of IT out of the hands of IT departments hands.  This is a phenomenon called BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – where employees want to use cutting edge products, such as iPhones and iPads, when doing their jobs.

The emphasis in the keynote speeches was high level and strategic, and not focussed on basic IT issues such as “what is cloud computing”, although there were plenty of vendors in the exhibition only too happy to discuss such issues. Charles Christian’s introduction set the tone well and his was the most useful presentation of the day, to my mind. In a nutshell the message is that technology is a tool that needs to be integrated into the whole business: it’s not just an accounts package or social media platform. To put it another way, don’t let the technology tail wag the dog.

There were presentations and exhibitors galore, including from two futurologists Dr Patrick Dixon and Gerd Leonhard, both of whom gave entertaining presentations on likely future trends. I don’t think their presentations contained much that was new to anyone who already has an interest in tech, but would have done to those who have avoided or ignored the subject to date such as, allegedly, all those technology hating law firm partners, who didn’t seem to form the bulk of the crowd (although I admit I didn’t see the full delegate list).

I wonder who the conference was aimed at: the Director of IT (who would presumably already be convinced on the strategic issues) or the law firm partner wondering how they could implement an IT strategy? Judging from the attendees there, it was the legal IT professional rather than the practitioner.  If so then I suspect the impact of the message may have been dulled somewhat. Brian Inkster reports in his blog post that Charles Christian told him the “Holy Grail” of these conferences is to get law firm partners along. If so, I think there was too much emphasis on the high level issues and not enough on what tech can actually do. There was an assumption of too great a level of knowledge for those who are ignorant of technology.

Perhaps the conference tried to do too much? Having a main presentation stage with keynote speakers and two further “exhibition” stages where vendors and users could promote themselves didn’t work for me as it was never quite clear what was happening in the exhibition stages and when.  For instance, I would have liked to see the talk “How to make money while you sleep” up on the main stage, instead of it being sidelined in the exhibition during the lunchbreak, so I missed it.

If you want to attract law firm partners to these events you need to provide presentations on basic issues such as “the Cloud”, online document productions and, yes, how to use social media but within the wider context of making law firms leaner and more efficient (think “Lean Six Sigma” for instance). There is lots of discussion but precious little clarity on how to go forward. A greater emphasis on using technology as part of the package of renewing individual businesses is needed.  For instance, a discussion about how tech could help firms adjust to fixed fee or value pricing surely ought to attract managing partners? It would also be better if it could take place outside the environment of a sales-driven exhibition. If law firm partners won’t come along to these events is it because they are (a) too busy (poor excuse) (b) don’t see the relevance to their businesses (a fault of the organisers) (c) don’t have the money or time to invest or (d) they hate technology (I have my doubts about this but will discuss in another blog post). Answers via the comments section please.

Leaving these criticisms aside, I certainly don’t want to be churlish:  I enjoyed the day and met some interesting people (which is often the best thing about these events).  The keynote speakers were entertaining and interesting and it was a very well run event. However, I don’t think it reached out enough to the critical  audience: solicitors.

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Today is the day when, finally, more than four years after the Legal Services Act received Royal Assent, the SRA started accepting applications for Alternative Business Structures (ABS), thus meaning we’re on the cusp of a possible “titanic battle for the hearts and minds of potential customers” as the new style legal businesses jump into the existing legal marketplace. Or, more likely, a prolonged period of trench warfare as “traditional” law firms struggle to adapt to the challenges posed by new forms of I.T, fixed fees and ever increasing insurance premiums.

The Ministry of Justice sent out a press release hailing this “milestone” and saying, rather misleadingly in my view,

From today UK consumers and businesses will find solicitors’ firms more competitive, more accessible and more efficient following reforms to legal services.

Leaving aside the issue of whether the introduction of ABS will bring all this about (and it would probably be silly to deny that it won’t have any effect at all) isn’t it going too far to claim that merely by accepting applications for ABS the whole legal landscape will change as they predict?  At least give the SRA chance to actually process a few applications first!  It may be at least a month before the lucky applicants are known – which also sounds rather optimistic.

From what I read before Christmas there were only a handful of interested parties anyway.  I wonder if that remained the case or whether the Postman delivering the SRA’s mail had an especially large mailbag today?

Time will tell.

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Last month the Law Society published the outcome of a survey it had conducted amongst small firms, which claimed that 1 in 10 small practices were planning to close down because of the cost of complying with the regulatory regime contained in the new Solicitors’ Handbook, commonly known as “Outcomes Focused Regulation” (OFR) would be prohibitive.

The report claimed that 9% of firms surveyed were planning to close or merge as a result of the increased costs of compliance. The report also suggested that 23% of firms with fewer than 10 partners did not record how much time was spent on compliance whereas those that did claimed to spend a whopping 27 days per annum on it. That, of course, must be on the old Code of Conduct, not the new, but as each firm will now have to get on top of the new rules, and will have to appoint a Compliance Officer Legal Practice (COLP) and a Compliance Officer Finance and Administration (COFA), by next March, the amount of compliance work is only going to increase, in the short term anyway. It does not help that these new roles cannot be outsourced. However, I doubt that OFR will be, on its own, the cause of many firms to pack it all in.

My initial reaction to OFR (aka Freedom in Practice) was that whilst it may be yet another issue with which to get to grips, the emphasis was on saying goodbye to box ticking and taking a more common-sense approach to regulation. Provided you adhered to the Ten Commandments (sorry, Principles) you ought to be fine and if you had complied with the 2007 Code of Conduct you would have little to fear from OFR.   The new Handbook is significantly shorter than then old and there are “Indicative Behaviours” to guide you as well.  This taken with the SRA’s stated desire to be friends with the profession, to supervise and help and only to come down hard on those  firms that refuse to change or accept help, left me feeling that maybe this was not such a bad development.  The Law Society’s survey said that 56% of respondents were in favour of OFR, so I wasn’t alone in being cautiously optimistic.

Then last Monday I went to a seminar organised by CoreLegal, the message of which shook me out of my complacency.      Granted, I was always slightly suspicious of the SRA’s desire to be warm and cuddly.  How could they give up the pedantic, hard taskmaster image cultivated so successfully over so many years?  Could they really get away from a culture of prescriptive micro-regulation? The desire to “supervise” always had an element of Doublespeak about it.  But, there is force in the SRA’s admission (stated during their “Freedom in Practice” Roadshows earlier in the year) that they can’t micro-manage every law firm and ABS and need to concentrate their resources on the law businesses that do pose a real risk to the profession, leaving those that comply (or show that they are attempting to comply) in peace.

However, the message from the CoreLegal seminar is that nothing in OFR is clear and law firms face great uncertainty in what they are being asked to implement.   Yes, there are Ten Principles that are set in stone, but instead of being clearly understandable they are a movable feast.  Thou shalt not kill is easily understood, no room for confusion there, but “ you must provide a proper standard of service to your clients”, whilst also seemingly unobjectionable and reasonable begs the question, what is a “proper standard”.  Is it a good service or merely middling?  Is it more subjective and does it depend on the type of service being provided, i.e is the level of service demanded of a firm acting for individuals (particularly vulnerable clients) going to be higher than that demanded of a big commercial firm acting for corporate clients (answer = yes).  Where is that level of service to be pitched?  There is no one prescriptive level of service and that is what makes the whole prospect of OFR so daunting for many.  In other words, what constitutes a proper standard for one client may not be sufficient for another.

Similarly Outcome 1.1 “You (must) treat your clients fairly”.  Who judges what is fair?  Isn’t this highly subjective and bound to be interpreted against the solicitor?  But hold on a minute.  Is this really so onerous?  Are there any solicitors who do not want to treat their clients fairly?  The difficulty for practitioners is that we simply do not know how these rules will be interpreted, but surely it is better to have guidelines for behaviour rather than pedantic rules and requirements that must be obeyed, even if they are not relevant to that particular firm’s area of practice?

The Handbook came about from an understandable desire by the SRA not to have a two tier regulatory system – one for “traditional” law firms and the other for ABS law firms.  That means that much of the new Handbook is drafted with ABS in mind, i.e. new entrants to the legal marketplace that may have many other commercial interests.  One of the examples cited at the seminar as being a difficulty for law firms was Outcome 8.4, the mandatory requirement that “clients and the public have appropriate information about you, your firm and how you are regulated”.  I disagree.  For law firms that do not convert to ABS the information to be given is simple and is set out at Outcome 8.5 – you need to inform clients via your letterheading, emails and website that you are authorised and regulated by the SRA. Job done?  For ABS that do unreserved as well as reserved legal activities, or say a firm of accountants that becomes an ABS I can see that these issues might be more problematic, but should it be concerning to the plain vanilla smaller law firms that are owned wholly by their partners/members?

The answer to all these (and other problems), at least according to the speakers at the event, is to communicate with clients to assess what they need and how they perceive the service they receive.  No longer will what is on the file be enough evidence to show that you have provided a proper level of service.  Instead, it was suggested, you will need to have a dialogue with clients throughout the case and afterwards (in the form of questionnaires) to ascertain whether they felt they had received a proper level of service.  That may involve retaining external consultants to send out questionnaires and to interview clients on the retainer relationship. I don’t have a problem with this in principle, indeed probably all successful businesses listen to their clients and work on feedback, but does it require a satellite industry to be created? Is this really a regulatory requirement or merely good commercial practice?  I suspect it is the latter.

There are troublesome aspects to the new Handbook and this is where potential difficulties lie.  If a law firm makes a mistake there is now a positive duty upon the solicitor to inform the client “if you discover any act or omission which could give rise to a claim by them against you”.  Just what should you say in this situation that will not prejudice your PI insurer’s position? There is sure to be much debate over that issue in the future.

Risk management is a main focus in the new regime.  That is not just legal risk, but financial and managerial as well and many firms may struggle to get to grips with it.  For the first time, the business of being a solicitor is a matter of professional conduct.  Consider Principle No. 8,

You must run your business or carry out your role in the business effectively and in accordance with proper governance and sound financial and risk management principles

And under Outcome 7.4

you maintain systems and controls for monitoring the financial stability of your firm and risks to money and assets entrusted to you by clients and others, and you take steps to address issues identified;

In other words, if the Bank called in its overdraft to your firm suddenly, what contingency plans do you have?  For those firms that are run properly and prudently do they have much to fear? No one wants to see another Halliwells disaster and I cannot help but feel that these requirements are prudent and sensible.   If you read Chapter 7 of the Code of Conduct it reads to me as though it is written with the ABS in mind, not with law firms that already are used to supervising staff.  It must surely be in the profession’s interest that rogue firms, or firms that are shambolically run, are forced out of business and also to make sure that no such businesses are allowed to enter.

The CoreLegal seminar was very thought provoking, but there could ve usefully been much more on the role of COLP and COFA, which was somewhat glossed over toward the end. Both roles need to be undertaken by people of sufficient seniority who will act as the eyes and ears of the SRA within each firm.  In other words, COLP and COFA have the unwelcome burden of reporting any breaches to the SRA.  Failure to report a breach may have to be justified at a later stage.

 Undoubtedly challenges lie ahead, but I cannot help thinking that many of the people prophesying regulatory doom actually have much more idea of what lies ahead than others. The force in the Corelegal seminar was to make the point that we are entering a regime of retrospective regulation, which isn’t a particularly comfortable place to be. We are all in the same boat: no one quite knows what is expected and that is indeed an unsatisfactory state of affairs. I don’t think that requires large numbers of small practices to shut up shop:  finding new work, paying ever increasing indemnity premiums and coping with pressure on fee income are probably greater threats to many practices.  However, the profession has claimed for years to be over-regulated and now the SRA has, hopefully, taken steps to remedy it.  Put the doom-mongers to one side for the time being and give it a chance. In turn the SRA has to ensure that it doesn’t lose this opportunity to build bridges with the profession.  It will only take a few well-publicised harsh regulatory decisions to alienate practitioners and throw OFR into disrepute.

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Brands won’t kill your law firm, clients will.

Solicitors need to engage with their clients and find out what they want.

The top line was the title of a webinar I took part in last night with Jon Busby of Epoq (@legal2.0) and Amanda Bancroft of 41Minds, a digital media agency who may be better known as @_millymoo.  It wasn’t a sales pitch by Jon about how any particular piece of technology (still less that produced by his business) can help lawyers, but a more high level relaxed discussion about how lawyers need to adapt their work processes in order to survive. It was good fun batting the ideas around. If you missed it, here is a summary of the main points.

Jon has also set up #flegal as the hashtag for these debates – some good comments came through from a pretty clued up internet savvy bunch of practitioners.  I did my best to be a Luddite though …

The second line is, for me, the main message that came through from the discussion. There is no one magic bullet of technology that will revolutionise legal practice. It’s not about giving up the lease on the office and becoming a virtual law firm (although for some it might be) and nor is it about dumbing down the advice given (for anyone). Law firms are human organisations and that is what gives them their edge.  It’s much simpler than that: solicitors need to understand what their clients want in terms of service delivery and quality of service – for proof of this take a read of the recent Peppermint Technology report.  And that may not be as simple as it sounds. It is commonplace to talk about their being a “disconnect” between solicitors and their clients – where is that gap and can it be bridged? First you need to find it.

#flegal Clients want solicitors to be close to them (i.e. keep in touch) but solicitors think that quality of drafting is what is important

November 8, 2011 9:32 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@TheTimeBlawg

The Time Blawg

Probably all lawyers believe they provide a “quality service” to their clients, but what does that mean? Does it have to involve a bespoke, one to one, sitting in a meeting room, (and highly expensive) type of service? That might be appropriate in some cases but by no means all.

V interesting points in #flegal webinar, user centric digital delivery, how can lawyers use this without compromising quality?

November 8, 2011 9:23 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@LAHumph

Louise Humphries

Some clients will not want to come to the office and will be content to deal remotely.  Others might want to be able to do the job themselves (i.e. wills and employment contracts) and come along for advice at certain mileposts in their case (if contentious) or if they need non-standard advice. In my view quality advice comes down to knowing the practice area well, i.e being a specialist and knowing the answers. There is no reason why that can’t be combined with being online, offline or both.

#flegal Process and intellect. Come to law firm for the intellect. Unbundle. Be brick + click NOT brick to click.

November 8, 2011 10:11 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@TheTimeBlawg

The Time Blawg

Perhaps more important is the subject of data capture, using software that allows the client to input their details, saving the law firm time and resources in gathering those basic details. Data capture and data mining are probably the biggest issue in modern commerce – look at Google for instance – but law firms aren’t generally very good at it. The relevance of date capture is to enable better processing of work, to reduce the “cost to serve” as Jon calls it. Or, to put it more simply, to reduce your costs.  This is fundamental to my mind because clients are already highly price sensitive, hourly rates are probably on borrowed time in the majority of transactions and disputes, to be replaced by fixed fees, and with major reforms of litigation costs on the horizon.

For many, the ideal approach might be to abandon a physical presence and become virtual, what the Peppermint report calls “Brick to Click”.  The survey shows that “clients of all types care very little about the physical location of law firm offices” and lawyers should look to “clicks and data” and new entrants to the market will probably do that anyway.  Jon’s view, using John Lewis PLC as an example, is that the right solution may be “bricks and clicks”, i.e don’t throw everything away and reinvent the wheel.  John Lewis now has a massive online presence, as well as many branches throughout the country.  That has been achieved on the back of excellent customer service.  Take Amazon, a wholly online business.  That has thrived from providing a great customer experience.  It isn’t perceived as being a “cheap” brand – yet it is 100% online.

What is needed is careful analysis of what your clients want and how they want it and to then respond.  Law firms need to consider a blend of services – online and real and need to promote the services they offer. It is no point having a web facility that allows clients 24/7 access to their files if they don’t tell clients it is there.  Ultimately it is about being responsive to what clients want.  That is the challenge ahead.

There will be more webinars where Jon develops some of these (and other) themes.

Additional Reading;

http://www.solicitorsmarketingsystem.com/blog/blog/brands-wont-kill-law-firms-clients-will/

http://thenewplayingfieldforlegalservices.blogspot.com/

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In addition to wanting to reform employment law, the government also wants to improve the public’s understanding of the legal process by allowing filming inside courts. It is bound to be controversial – do you remember the furore over televising parliament when that was first proposed?  In general I tend to be in favour of modernising proposals but I think this one is wrong, both in principle and in terms of what is actually proposed. ITN recently ran a debate on the subject and you can see the brief introduction above and the full discussion below.

What’s it got to do with the issues currently facing the profession?  Well s.1 (1)(f) of the Legal Services Act 2007  states that it is a regulatory objective  under the Act  to “increase public understanding of the citizen’s legal rights and duties”, which at least hints at joined up government. At the moment only the Supreme Court allows its proceedings to be filmed. However, I doubt that these proposals will do very much to promote that particular objective.

Ken Clarke’s initial plans are for filming and broadcasting only the Judgments in the Court of Appeal and the Crown Courts.  In other words you won’t see the whole trial being televised, so if a big murder trial is covered you won’t see the witnesses giving evidence, nor barristers with their best suits and polished shoes playing to the Jury, and nor will you see the Jury at all, let alone the Foreman standing to announce the verdict: it will simply be the Judge giving his/her verdict or sentence.  To his credit, Clarke says he intends to proceed “cautiously” and he also intends to publish court-by-court statistics on various measures, such as the length of time cases take from offence to conviction, how many trials were ineffective and the sentences handed down. The latter seems like a good plan, but I think the former  is wrong.  It seems like the main thrust of the initiative is focused on the criminal court process and not civil.  That is understandable because criminal cases will usually make the most compelling television, but does nothing to educate the public on the areas of law that are probably more likely to affect them.

And that is the problem, the televising of trials will risk trivializing proceedings. The Chief Executive of Victim Support is reported to have warned about “Judge Judy” style programmes and Roger Gale MP is also worried about “eccentric” lawyers playing to the cameras.   Do we really want to see something like the OJ Simpson trial repeated over here?  The cameras would only be interested in either trials involving celebrities or the most high profile murder trials.  Gale is right to warn of the whole process being turned into an entertainment, a 21^st century version of the pillory, which would neither explain the legal processes involved or shed light on why the particular defendant acted as he/she did.  Just wait for some self-appointed vigilante to opine that the sentence handed down wasn’t severe enough and try to mete out his own “justice”.

Televising parliament was different because that involved covering the proceedings of the body that makes our laws, which are clearly matters of public interest.  Many criminal trials may interest the public, but that is a different matter.

You can see why the TV companies have been lobbying hard to be allowed in. The possibilities for television coverage are endless. Just think, if a case was televised on ITV, during commercial breaks you’d have Ray Winstone giving the latest on screen odds, “”2-1 the Defendant’s mum says “he’s a good boy really”. 50-1 the Defendant’s wife storms out of court looking for a divorce lawyer. You wanna bet on sentence? The odds are on-screen: 11/8 nine years, 10-1 life … Bet in Play … Nah”.

Alternatively on the BBC you could also have legal experts sitting on a sofa in the studio discussing the case;

Alan -  “it looks bad for the Defendant, he left the pub, went home got the carving knife and then he found the victim in an alley and stabbed him.. that’s GBH with intent…shockin’ “

Lee – “But Alan, don’t forget he was provoked, he’d been taunted all night and he’d just split up from his girlfriend”

Alan “Aye, but this Judge has form.  You know what they say about him?  He gives a fair trial and a very unfair sentence.  This laddie is going down for a looong time. His Defence was very p0or, all over the place, he stands no chance on appeal. I hope he’s got his toothbrush”

Cut to Gary

“And we’re hearing that the Judge has come back from lunch and is going to sit now, so back to Mottie in the court room for the sentence…”

But, what if, instead, the Judge is too lenient?

Gary – “we shouldn’t criticize Judges of course, they have a difficult job sitting up there all alone, but the Defendnat got away lightly there didn’t he?

Alan – “Aye, it’s shockin’.  We need consistency from the Judiciary, the UK courts are the best in the world but this result is just a disgrace.  The Lord Chief Justice needs to get him in for extra training on Monday.”

Clarke’s proposals don’t go that far of course.  He only wants Judgments to be filmed.  But this risks pleasing no one (perhaps apart from practitioners who will be able to get up to the decisions right from the horse’s mouth).  As one of the speakers on the ITN film above states, most Judgments will be ”turgidly boring” and do little to enlighten the viewer as to the workings of the legal system or the rationale for the verdict. So neither entertaining nor educational.

As with most innovations it will be a salami slicing process.  First the Judgments then, when everyone has got used or bored with that, Counsels’ closing speeches.  Then the witnesses, until the whole proceedings are filmed from beginning to end.  Then you can imagine the public’s reaction: “criminal trials?  They’re like Grand Prixes; you want to watch the beginning to see how he pleads, the stuff in the middle is boring and then you want to see the finish, that’s the fun bit when the Jury comes back.  It’s a murdah so it’s got to be a mandatory life sentence, none of these Pre-sentence reports to spoil the fun.  Could be a minimum 25 years for this you know”

(voices off) Now time for a quick break before the Jury Foreman returns the verdict;

“The latest live odds are on screen: Gwillty: evens favourite, Not Gwillty: 100-1. Whole Life Tariff? 500 -1.  Bet in play … Nah!”

Let’s hope the Jury aren’t following this on their iPhones.

What are the odds on a three week constructive unfair dismissal and sex discrimination case being filmed? Now that would be interesting … *

*100,000 – 1

Many thanks to ITN for sending me the links to their programmes on what is a serious issue.  The full debate is below;

What do you think?  Please take a moment to answer then poll below

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So, today is the day: 6^th October 2011, ABS day.  The day when the last element of the Legal Services Act comes into force, except that it hasn’t unless you happen to be licensed by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), who had the pleasure of making history by licensing the very first ABS.

Premier Property Lawyers, the conveyancing arm of MyHomeMove has been granted a licence to operate by the CLC.  Click here for the story in Legal Futures.  This will be a good pub quiz question in later years.

Aside from this Big Bang appears not to have occurred, not yet anyway. Not today.

Of course, this isn’t surprising because the CLC isn’t the main show in town: the SRA is and no doubt many commercial organisations will seek to be licensed through the SRA to give themselves maximum flexibility in respect of the reserved legal activities they can offer. They will have to wait until January or February before they can reveal their hand. The SRA missed the boat for today’s launch because of legislative delays and concerns over non-disclosure of previous convictions among ABS applicants.  With the SRA being the only regulator able to license ABS wanting to do the full range of reserved legal activities (save for Notarial functions) and the CLC only able to licence conveyancing and probate as areas of work, the commencement of ABS today will be something of a damp squib.

However, that didn’t stop the Today programme having a debate on the subject this morning between Jonathan Gulliford of the Co-OP Legal Services and Clive Sutton of the Sole Practitioners’ Group (SPG) or from putting up a summary of the Legal Services Act on its website (see here).

Clive Sutton’s main point was that ABS threatened the independence of legal advice given to consumers, because the commercial interest behind an ABS will taint that advice in the interests of making a profit.  I don’t think that is the main point at all – the main issue is competition and being able to respond appropriately to the challenges posed by the new entrants to the market.

The SPG was the organisation that briefly threatened a few months back to force a futile and costly ballot of all solicitors on the issue of whether the Law Society should allow the SRA to be able to licence ABS, before seeing sense. Gulliford made fairly short work of him.

Fresh from that skirmish, Gulliford then popped up again, this time on the sofa of BBC Breakfast in debate this time with Craig Holt, of Quality Solicitors.  Holt conceded that the threat of competition had led to QS introducing new innovations – Saturday opening and fixed fees.  Holt’s main point was that local firms could be driven out of business thus reducing the provision of good, face to face advice.

Gulliford set out the Co-Op’s vision which is to have high street “law offices” staffed with solicitors, legal executives, barristers and paralegals.  Their key aim is to change the way people perceive the cost of legal services and they will commit to upfront fixed fee pricing so people will know what they’ll be paying for their work.  Craig Holt made some good points in return and highlighted the issue of concern for many practitioners: namely that providing legal advice by telephone isn’t the best way to provide a service, especially in sensitive cases.

It will be interesting to see whether the Co-OP’s commitment to fixed fees extends to the litigation services they offer.    Fixed fees is the coming key battleground and unless the Co-Op  use economies of scale to make their service cheaper, I can’t see how they can commit to fixed fees in litigation on the basis of High Street law firms staffed by qualified lawyers whilst remaining commercial, unless they use the law offices as a “front” for a centralised telephone and email service.  That, however, was not what Mr Gulliford was suggesting they intended to do.   It will be very interesting to watch the Co-op over the next few months.

The perception of lawyers isn’t helped though by making Luddite calls for the LSA to be repealed, or for lawyers to be given special treatment. What we need now is for law firms to start demonstrating how good they are, what a good service they provide and to show how they can (and do) help clients.  It’s time to blow thoise trumpets, not cry over spilt milk.

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