The launch of the solicitors’ comparison website wigster.com, reported by the Gazette, is likely to engender polemic reaction from within the profession.Many will see the site as another threat to contend with alongside ABSs, while others will view it as a means of fighting back.
But whichever side they take, no one though who has even casually considered the global market explosion over the last few decades, with added fuel from amazing advances in technology since the mid-1990s, can be surprised that these forces will now impact on the legal profession.
The lifting of the ban on solicitors’ advertising in 1987 was similarly polarising. I remember a district judge telling me that advertising was anathema to a profession, and that one would be rightly suspicious of any doctor who had to shout about his services in this way. Quite what that DJ would have made of the marketing of private medical services these days is not difficult to guess. Others welcomed the opportunity to compete openly on price, although usually proclaiming a high-quality service.
Conveyancing scale fees were abolished in 1972, but until the advertising ban was done away with, it was difficult for the public to compare prices. Even then, quality of work and service remained hard to differentiate, other than anecdotally.Interestingly, wigster is part-owned by solicitors, perhaps as testament to the view that getting involved with the fight for market share is better than hand-wringing on the sidelines. In terms of public perception, a comparison website that scores firms on price, service and reputation could be of more interest than a Law Society campaign that seeks only to persuade people that solicitors in general are a good thing.
The kind of money that national TV coverage must cost is a sign that the profession can compete in marketing terms with the big companies that will surely emerge next year. Through this kind of initiative, solicitors can get a head start. This will inevitably mean a driving down of price, but there is no hiding place in an ever more transparent market.
If prices are to fall, then it is vital that firms look to the cost of production. That will mean a move away from outdated working practices that have no place in the modern world. Automation and delegation are key to survival. A repressed market has for too long enabled unjustifiably costly working methods to persist, and their days are surely numbered. The likes of wigster might just incentivise firms to act before it is too late.
Martin Langan is a former practising solicitor and founder of Legal Workflow Limited providing services tailoring practice and case management systems and legal IT strategy and operational advice and assistance
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