Law firms should check out how successful retailers are in promoting their brand value and cultivating client loyalty, argues Tim Roberts

Is it possible that despite the popular jokes about lawyers, the legal profession embodies the kind of elusive goodwill that large brand-value supermarkets and insurance companies will want to capture? If the answer to this question is yes, then the issue to consider is whether the future for the profession is a threat or an opportunity.

The UK Personal Injury Litigation Data Monitor Report of September 2002 considered carefully, in the context of personal injury claims, the competing roles of the insurance industry, accident intermediaries, and solicitors in capturing the customer and providing a valued service.

The conclusion for solicitors was that they are well respected, but still have a long way to go to improve their marketing capabilities.

Law firms were described as customer unfriendly, stuffy and complex.

The recommendation to tackle the problem was to advertise their services and benefits more effectively if they are to ensure a strong, growing customer base.

Perhaps if they were also transparent in their fee structures, then that may also engender a more welcome response from the customer.

Easy to say, but easy to achieve? Perhaps the reason why lawyers are not good at marketing is that for generations they never needed to be.

Your solicitor bought and sold the family home, sought redress in the face of injustice and embodied something dependable, worthy of trust and a kind of nobility.

These traditional qualities, perhaps left unsaid, remain.

The so-called supermarket-law proposals are not a threat to the profession but an opportunity.

Retailers understand the importance of brand value and customer satisfaction; they have had years of cultivating the science.

However, what they need is products that capture customer loyalty - and that is what the legal profession can provide.

The personal injury market is a good example of the point.

Accident intermediaries tried to fill the marketing gap for the profession with crude advertising that patronised the consumer and ultimately failed.

However, the reason for their entrance into the market was not just the promotion of slogans.

Instead, they recognised that what lawyers provide in this area is a service - and it has value.

Where better than in the beleaguered personal injury market - where claims have become a dirty word - to enhance brand value? A branded law firm can offer predictable fees and enjoy greenfield site technology with no strings or conditions for the customer - just a direct accessible service combining the best of the profession with a label you can rely on.

Clients can even spend the compensation they receive from the lawyers in the store.

Once the baggage around running a legal service alongside financial and insurance products has gone, we can perhaps change the chemist to a portal for rehabilitation as well.

Insurers struggle to see or measure the benefit of rehabilitation - but do they need to? Surely, if we want customers/clients to keep buying our infinite range of products in our store, either virtually or in reality, we must look after them and their families when they need it.

Either we recognise this and embrace change, or as so often has been the case we bury our heads in the sand, wondering why we have a problem with our image.

Let us not always manage the service for our clients around our need to hang on to what we know.

The profession needs to change - and we need to accept this.

Tim Roberts is a partner at London-based law firm Plexus Law