History has a habit of repeating itself. Why do we never learn from previous experience?

There are many good things. The introduction of non-lawyers to ownership is one following years of consideration.

Some other factors are, however, doubtful in my mind, such as more access to finance.

I keep seeing articles about the threat to the legal profession by others.

Tesco Law is now perhaps a rather dated expression, but it is true that the likes of Tesco, Co-Op and others have indicated their intentions.

Yes and sure the profession must make itself more alert to the market and client needs, but I would like to turn it all on its head using some of my experience from other industries.

To begin with the desire to venture into new products and services by large corporate is likely to have two results for the providers.

Either the new venture will not have been well enough researched and it goes ahead laden with baggage and capital outlay upon which, it is later realised, that the ROI is seen to be insufficient.

Or, the consequences of research and due diligence lead to a watered down product or service which is late or wrong for the market.

Products at the supermarket counter especially those apparently competing on price such as travel insurance may lack the full amount of cover for certain incidents and thus the consumer may be caught out when making a claim.

It is quite possible for the large industries to make wrong decisions and be naive about other industries in the belief that their business model will continue to work in another field.

How do I know? I have been there! Having also been, for my sins, an estate agent and banker, I was working for a bank at the time that it was the ‘in thing’ to take over estate agents.

It was discovered that just two of us had worked in the property market out of the thousands who were employed.

We were asked to join the senior management discussions.

The project fell apart for the very simple reason that the number of sales per agent’s office had been completely over estimated.

In some cases the over estimate was twenty fold. It was a good decision not to go ahead. How many of the original banks or building societies that went ahead are now still in that market?

The point is that I don’t think that there will be such a thing as ‘a partnership which realises synergies’ in the legal profession because the new providers will want to run things their way.

Their way will probably not recognise the intricacies of the profession and seek to provide the services through call centres.

Are we as a nation suffering from poorer services as a consequence of multiple service providers? Is this now to include the legal profession? Often the services have to be outsourced.

Or the services are provided from call centres manned by ill equipped people with insufficient training to understand the industry or customer needs.

On the whole I do not think that professional services, which now need specialists in each area and not generalists, can be broken down yet further into bite sized chunks for an untrained operator to handle. This is not in the consumers interests.

The indemnity insurers will go spare when they look at risk management issues and the likes of Tesco et al should take heed, because when the indemnity claims start rolling in after complaints about legal work they might not think that it was such a good idea.

I don’t think the regulators would be able to control it satisfactorily.

There will be few readers who have had bad experiences of call centre operations and will know what I am talking about.

Such operations already exist in the legal profession, and we know that the risk is greater where they do. So imagine this risk multiplied into an uncertain level for the future.

It is comparatively easy, (note comparatively), to make the decision to get involved and create an ABS to include legal services but what comes next is paramount to success or failure and then what very few seem to think about is what comes after that.

There are numerous examples even on an international and political basis. Take Iraq for example. It must not be assumed that just because the decision maker is big and powerful that all will go through smoothly, or that they will be right.

I think it is a useful analogy.

So what about the future of the ABS? Yes they will happen. The profession for some time to come will have to cope with the competition. The way to beat that is to be sharper, focus on the client and give brilliant service.

Not to try to compete on price as that is usually bad marketing and lowers profit on the principle of diminishing returns.

But in the future, in the ‘what happens after that’ phase, I think that they will fail.

In meantime get on with it and beat them at the personal service and knowledge game where they cannot compete.

Food for thought? Do you disagree?

Mike Gorick, The Compliance People