Satisfied customers

With the public praising the standard of service offered by solicitors, Janet Paraskeva asserts that this image of a knowledgeable and modern legal profession needs to be projected more widely

I often find myself the bearer of unwelcome news to solicitors so it makes a nice change to be able to bring some good news.

The results of recent research by the Law Society have shown that, by and large, members of the public are happy with the service they receive from their solicitors and value it highly.

This is just one of the things that we learned from the research that we commissioned to assist us in drawing up our response to the government's consultation paper, In the Public Interest?

The most impressive result was the overall satisfaction of clients with their solicitors.

Some 84% of those questioned were satisfied with their solicitor and, in total, 53% of the interviewees were very satisfied.

Nonetheless, dissatisfied customers were not negligible in number.

Some 10% of those interviewed said they had not been happy with the services received.

Clearly, there is no room for complacency, but I think the profession can be pleased with the positive response, and one that is certainly significantly different from the surveys carried out by the RAC and Which? magazine.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people were most impressed by their solicitor's knowledge of the law - 88% of the respondents said they were satisfied.

Similarly, more than four out of five people said their solicitor offered good customer care, and that the service offered was convenient and offered at times that were suitable for them.

By and large, most people would still prefer to see a solicitor in a dedicated office.

This had been particularly important for those seeking advice about divorce or other matrimonial matters, where nearly three-quarters of those polled said they would prefer the more traditional office.

People trying to take action over faulty goods or services were much less concerned about where they received their solicitor's advice - slightly more than one-third said the appropriate place would be a solicitor's office, but the remainder would be happy to discuss the issue elsewhere.

On other legal issues - from employment matters to conveyancing, housing law to probate - the majority of clients would, said this survey, prefer to see a solicitor in the familiar setting of a solicitor's office.

What is even more interesting for the profession - and for those large commercial organisations which have expressed enthusiasm about moving into legal services - is that there does not appear to be a great deal of interest in accessing legal services through supermarkets, estate agents or banks.

The interviewees showed most interest in getting conveyancing done in this way, although these enthusiasts only amounted to 17% of our sample.

There was less interest in accessing legal services through new providers for all the other areas of law, and for probate only 7% of interviewees expressed interest.

Of course, this is not to say that if members of the public were to see legal services on offer in the estate agency through which they were selling their home, they would not be interested.

It is quite possible that they would.

Indeed, a good chunk of the sample indicated no preference - suggesting that there are at least some potential clients who had not made up their minds, but who might well be interested in new ways of accessing legal advice.

But the public is certainly not dissatisfied with the way services are currently delivered and there is not yet a great appetite for change.

As modern communications are transformed by electronic delivery, we also wanted to find out whether solicitors' clients were interested in receiving legal advice by e-mail or video link.

Face-to-face contact remained the preferred option of most interviewees (96%), followed by telephone advice (66%).

While many expressed hostility to receiving advice by video-conference, more than a quarter of the interviewees were nonetheless happy to consider this option - and we do know of a video scheme operating in a supermarket which is highly successful.

E-mail advice was a little more welcome, with one-third of interviewees giving it the thumbs-up.

The solicitors' profession and the Society have come under a lot of pressure from the government over recent years, particularly in relation to complaints.

In many ways this has been appropriate - it is important to ensure that clients and customers receive good quality services and have an effective recourse for complaints when they are not satisfied with the service they have received.

But given the pressure under which the profession has been working, it is heartening to know that those who have used a solicitor value highly the service they have received.

We now need to market the 'brand' of solicitor and help the public know what they can expect when they instruct a solicitor to act for them - the added value, the core values, and the quality service that can be delivered.

Janet Paraskeva is the Law Society Chief Executive