Report comment

I'm posting anonymously, so that I don't seem a braggart.

Selfishly speaking, the "commoditising" and dumbing down has been great for me, but bad for the "customer" overall.

I'm a decent, hard-working lawyer and, cough, pretty good at what I do. I don't profess to be outstanding, but I am good and I care.

As a naive 6 year PQE, I fancied a go on my own and started a practice just after the millenium. It took a year or two to build up, but went well. It is still a small firm, mostly because I want it to be.

Getting new clients and new work used to be fairly tough. It has become progressively easier as all of the changes that folk record below have unfolded.

Why?

Because the "commoditised" firms are, for the most part, absolutely **** (I won't use the actual word, but it isn't "good").

They "market" away very hard, but once hooked, they have very little interest in the actual clients, who, shock horror, are real people. The clients want to look their lawyer in the eye and for them to have some sort of a bedside manner.

They don't want checklists, call centres, questionnaires, or to talk to a different person every flipping time they call.

They don't want faceless monoliths.

I and my colleagues are really, really nice to our clients, meet them, stay with them throughout the case/matter and always go the extra mile. How old-fashioned!

Guess what, they love us and our marketing is all free because word of mouth is enough. Work walks in the door. Over time this has been helped massively by how awful the "commoditised" firms are - our clients tell us so time and time again. They use those firms once and once only.

I realise we are a micro-business, so many will yawn at this, but my model is repeatable year on year, morally sustainable and I sleep soundly at night.

Very old hat and, apparently, soon to be extinct.