Freelawyer under pressure to change nameSomething for nothing: on-line legal marketplace Lawjunction now free for law firms as well as clientsLaw firm members of legal referral site Freelawyer - which already number 270, with a further 100 on a free three-month trial - have expressed concern that the name of the site leads potential clients to expect a free service.Launched four months ago, Freelawyer.co.uk was the first product to hit the market from legal IT 'umbrella' company Judicium (see [2000] Gazette, 5 October, 22).Aimed at the public, the site provides legal information on family, motoring, personal injury, housing, employment and consumer law.

Users who need more detailed help or legal representation are referred to a local panel firm allocated by postcode.

Firms pay a 500 sign-up fee together with a 3 administration fee if they elect to submit an estimate of likely costs which can be requested by the client.

Judicium currently estimates that firms can expect to receive about 150-250 enquiries a year, depending on area, of which it says between 25%-33% may turn into instructions.Alex Mehta, Freelawyer's legal director, said the company's commitment to 'friction-free law' had made it the most popular law portal for consumers in the UK.

Nigel Ashman, head of marketing at Bath firm Thring Townsend, which is on the panel, said on the positive side, the site had put the firm 'in front of a client base it wanted to attract'.

'The difficulty is that people see "Freelawyer" and think "free", which sometimes makes the follow- through less straightforward,' he said.

Kent-based commercial and employment sole practitioner Justin Nelson, who is also on the panel, said although the site provided another source of leads for new clients, commercial leads were 'quite thin on the ground'.Mr Nelson also expressed concern over the Freelawyer brand, which he too said led some clients to believe that legal advice was also without charge.

He suggested that a second, linked site, for example, 'find-a-lawyer', might ease the problem.Leon de Costa, Freelawyer's chief executive officer, said they were looking at various ways to get round the problem of client expectations on costs.

He said the company had already added a section which allowed users to ask for an estimate of legal fees and added a warning about costs before clients contacted firms by e-mail.Meanwhile, Lawjunction.com, an on-line legal marketplace where solicitors' firms quote for clients' legal work, is now free for law firms as well as clients.Lawjunction gives every subscribing firm a free Web site.

This is in the form of a set of information pages about the firm and can be used either in tandem with a firm's existing site, or become its Web site.

The company said that 170 solicitors' offices have already subscribed, including four in the top 50 by annual fee income in the UK.

Since Lawjunction was launched last year, queries have ranged from modest personal injuries problems, family matters and commercial disputes, to a 1 million corporate takeover and a 100 million shipping matter.

No contract is formed on-line.Sue Allen