Solicitors have a long-standing image problem. Grania Langdon-Down looks at the attempts to put the profession in a more positive light


The Law Society’s new advertising slogan - ‘My hero, my solicitor’ - may be ‘a bit cheesy’ for some. But, for media lawyer Mark Stephens, when solicitors come only just above journalists and estate agents in public estimation, anything that shows lawyers do more than ‘stripe you up for a few bob’ must be helpful.

Mr Stephens, head of media at London law firm Finers Stephens Innocent, says: ‘Solicitors are plumbing the depths in public estimation and generic advertising which assists in educating, proselytising and making people understand the good we do for society and the social responsibility we have is very helpful.’


Predictably, the Law Society’s £30,000 taster for a possible national advertising campaign has provoked some strong feelings among the profession, which is still a bit queasy about the whole concept of self-promotion.


The four adverts - which will be on show in railway stations in York, Newcastle and Leamington Spa and two London tube stations over the next month - focus on how solicitors can help in a family, housing, employment or business crisis, while encouraging members of the public to make use of the Law Society’s Web site to choose a legal adviser.


Barbara Calahane, the Society’s director of public affairs, says: ‘The main driver for the campaign was promoting our improved Web site to the public. When we sat down to work on that, we realised it was an opportunity to send out other messages about the profession. The legal services marketplace is getting fairly crowded now with a lot of unqualified advisers offering their services, and we wanted to promote the brand of solicitor and remind people that it is better to go to someone who is properly qualified.


‘A secondary driver was a desire to begin changing people’s perceptions of solicitors - not all are white males. We are now quite a diverse profession - 40% are women, most are under 43 years old, while 20% of new admissions are from ethnic minority backgrounds. We wanted to show the public that your solicitor is pretty much someone like you.’


So, of the four ‘heroes’ featured, two are women and three are from ethnic minority backgrounds. According to a street poll conducted by ICM, 73% of the public said the adverts were believable and thought it would be easy to find a solicitor. The family advert (‘Three years without contact and I was missing them growing up. But I put Kuresh on the case. I see the kids every other weekend now. Kuresh is my solicitor’) had the highest credibility rating, while the one on business (‘Bad debts and worse decisions...My business was finished until Stephen got on the case. Now there’s hope again. Stephen is my solicitor’) scored the least highly - though all four scored better than 70%.


Ms Calahane maintains there is a dichotomy between the public’s professed dislike of lawyers as a group and research carried out two years ago that found that roughly 80% of people think their own solicitor is good or very good. ‘There is a tendency for people to think they have been exceptionally lucky. Yes, it is an absolute shame that we have 16,000 complaints a year to deal with but we estimate this is out of about 15 million transactions so the vast majority of people are getting a good service the vast majority of the time. This campaign is about reminding people that if you have a tricky problem, you need someone on your side.’


For Clare Rodway, managing director of media relations consultancy Kysen PR, the ‘My hero, my solicitor’ slogan is ‘a bit cheesy, though it does go some way towards tapping into that feeling that when you need a solicitor you want someone who is prepared to fight your corner’.


What the campaign does, she says, is raise the question of how to brand legal services. ‘In my view, the best definition of a brand is a promise delivered. This campaign appears to focus on communicating a promise - ie, the benefit to the public of using a solicitor over the increasing number of unqualified people allowed to provide legal services - but does it do anything to ensure that clients’ experience of using a solicitor matches up to that promise? There is a danger that the campaign could be setting up a new level of expectation, creating a gap with people’s actual experience. If so, the campaign could arguably do more harm than good.


‘However, if it is backed up with support to high street firms in improving client care standards and levels of service, then it is very much to be welcomed. Brands where promises match up with experience are very successful - brands that don’t very quickly became tarnished and get a shoddy image.’



Tackling issues: Scots’ approach to campaign

It is not the first time the Law Society has linked lawyers with heroes. In 1991, Will Power, a Superman figure with a large W on his chest, was used to promote Make a Will Week, but he proved unpopular with the profession. Before that was Mr Whatsisname in 1977 - a campaign aimed at encouraging people to get sound legal advice - but that was sabotaged by a solicitor taking the name by deed poll.

The last time the Law Society considered a generic advertising campaign was in 1996 when J Walter Thompson, one of the country’s top advertising agencies, was asked to pitch for a multi-million pound campaign before the plug was pulled on the idea.


This time round, the ‘my hero’ idea was thought up in-house by the Law Society’s corporate affairs team and then put out to a design agency. Rolling it out nationally could cost around £300,000 to £400,000, but Ms Calahane stresses that any decision to go ahead is dependent on an evaluation of the campaign’s impact and ‘whether members want us to spend their money in this way’.


The funds would have to come from commercial revenue as the Access to Justice Act prevents practising certificate fees being used for advertising. This followed the Law Society’s ‘Justice Denied’ campaign in 1999 against the Bill, which included full-page newspaper adverts featuring ‘victims’ of the government’s legal aid cuts. ‘We were subsequently proved right, although the Lord Chancellor at the time didn’t take too kindly to it,’ Ms Calahane says. In fact Lord Irvine of Lairg accused the Law Society of ‘propagating untruths’.


Looking back to 1996, Martin Mears, who was then Law Society President, remembers: ‘Everyone thought a national advertising campaign was a bad idea when I suggested it. It is part of the Society’s role to promote the image of solicitors. But my first thought when I saw these latest adverts was - will they attract mockery because solicitors are not seen as heroes?


‘And anyone thinking a step ahead will think, hang on - for all these heroic solicitors, there is a solicitor on the other side acting for the wicked landlord or wicked boss.’


Tony Girling, a litigation funding and costs expert, took over from Mr Mears as president at Chancery Lane after a contested election. ‘The campaign proposed at that time was a political hot potato in the context of what was going on in the Society,’ he recalls. ‘It would have been very expensive, extremely difficult to maintain on a continuing basis and there were clear ructions within the profession about funding it.


‘This latest pilot is a perfectly legitimate way of testing whether a wider campaign could have beneficial effects for the profession. The question then is - how do you fund it? Members might feel that the Society’s income from commercial ventures belongs to everyone and so a member in a big City firm might not see how they would benefit from adverts which are more relevant to high street and legal aid practices.’


For Mr Stephens, too much emphasis is being put on members’ reaction to the campaign. ‘What counts is - does the campaign work with the general public? The Law Society of Scotland took a very far-sighted approach in the early 1990s with a series of humorous television advertisements that covered the main areas of practice from commercial to family to crime to consumer with the catch phrase ‘It’s never too early to call your solicitor’. Clients loved it, but solicitors hated it - and since they were paying for it, that made the difference.’


The Scottish campaign, involving ten-second adverts showing a man in various awkward situations reaching for the telephone, was dropped after larger commercial firms, seeing no direct benefits and faced with a levy to continue, voted to end it in 1994. The Law Society of Scotland is currently running a low-key series of newspaper advertisements based around the slogan ‘Wherever you find yourself, a solicitor can help’.


The campaign comes at a time of renewed debate within the profession about the pros and cons of advertising. The Liverpool Law Society is polling members’ views on whether there should be a complete or partial ban on advertising and it plans to lobby the national body if there is a call for change.


Norman Jones, chairman of the Liverpool Law Society civil litigation committee, says the city has seen the worst side of advertising - on the sides of taxis, in doctors’ waiting rooms and on television - and there is a perception that it is damaging the reputation of solicitors. He says the poll has generated the biggest response the society has ever received.


‘People are passionate about their reputations,’ he says, pointing out that solicitors ‘saw the danger’ in Ireland and banned advertising there.


However, despite his personal view that advertising by some individual firms has gone too far, he supports the Law Society’s campaign. ‘People need to know how to contact a solicitor and what their role is. I don’t have a problem with that.’


Kerry Underwood, a personal injury specialist solicitor, was one of the first to advertise the work done by his firm. And while he says the Law Society should in principle be able to use advertising to promote the image of solicitors, the content and timing of the present campaign is wrong. ‘I have no problem with individual solicitors highlighting what they have done and the role they play in society, but the Law Society has to put its own house in order before it does this. It needs to address the much more important issues of who should regulate the profession, the issue of elections, of allowing referral fees to be paid which is an absolute disaster which could wreck the profession. It needs to sort out these ethical issues before it embarks on this sort of campaign.’


What is clear is it will be some time before solicitors or the public are ready for a US-style ‘National Love Your Lawyer Day’. ‘I don’t quite see the Council of the Law Society voting for that one just yet,’ laughs Ms Calahane.


The idea for a national day for lawyers was the brainchild of Florida attorney Nader Anise, who founded the American Lawyers Public Image Association in 2000. His marketing methods proved so successful he retired from practising law to concentrate on teaching lawyers how to market themselves.


The third National Love Your Lawyer Day will be held on 5 November. Says Mr Anise: ‘People are taken aback by the idea because not many have used the words love and lawyer in the same sentence before.


‘It is a day when we ask lawyers to do at least one hour of pro bono work and to get involved in their community, while we ask clients who appreciate their lawyers to show it with a card or a gift.’


He says the ‘My hero, my solicitor’ campaign is a good start. ‘It puts solicitors in a positive light but, like my campaign, it is just a stepping stone because not only do we need to educate the public about what lawyers do, we also have to remind lawyers that they need to act like civilised human beings towards each other and that unethical behaviour or animosity in the courtroom just promulgates the stereotype.’


Grania Langdon-Down is a freelance journalist