Food for thought

Fresh from spreading the word to breakfast time news audiences about the new services the Co-operative Legal Services plans to offer to consumers, its managing director met the trade press for ‘lunch’ to lay down the gauntlet to traditional law firms.

Above a Co-op store on The Strand in London, Eddie Ryan (pictured) and the Co-operative Group’s deputy chief executive Martyn Wates set out the fixed price, efficient, consistent, quality cradle-to-grave legal service it claims it can offer its ‘customers’. (He used that word advisedly, rather than clients - apparently Co-op research shows that their customers don’t want to be called clients.)

As the likable duo laid out their ambitions to become ‘one of the best’ law firms and compete with ‘every solicitor practice’, Obiter was left wondering if there was anything they couldn’t offer.

With lunch, arrived the answer. The orange juice and water were from the Co-op. However, despite being ‘good with food’ as the TV ad tells us, the sandwiches came from Prêt a Manger.