The Law21 blog entry on marketing has again inspired me to rant on the future of the legal profession.
‘Your solicitor, qualified to answer’ is a major national advertising and PR campaign to promote solicitors to the public.
Our aim is to encourage consumers to use solicitors by promoting their services and highlighting the unique selling points solicitors have to offer. Running from April to June, the campaign will focus on the reasons why solicitors are the only sensible choice for consumers. They are:
- more expert and reliable than other providers of legal or quasi-legal services
- properly regulated
- excellent value for money
… or so say the Law Society in their recent marketing campaign to raise the ‘brand’ of solicitors. I’d edit the list as follows:
- more expert and reliable than [many] other providers of legal or quasi-legal services [but are increasingly inferior to some]
- properly regulated [and insured for when they fail to be more expert and reliable than the other side]
- excellent value for money.
I don’t want to be confrontational; there are solicitors firms out there that do all the Law Society says, but they are the minority. Use a solicitor ten times over rather than some internet cowboys, but the badge of ’solicitor’ itself is no guarantee of quality. Solicitors should be the cornerstone of reliability and expertise, but firms must make some real changes. Taking the Law Society’s list:
- Expertise: I started off a solicitor in a high street firm which did a good amount of employment law for the firm’s size. I moved from there to a consultancy / insurance company you’ve never heard of, which in respect of its consultancy at least is completely unregulated. The quality at the latter was ten times better - the expertise and dedication to employment law was enormous. I’m not saying the law firm wasn’t competent - it was that and more - but it didn’t have the same excellence. I attribute the excellence at the consultancy to the commercial pressure of competition. If you’re Bloggs & Co Solicitors then you immediately have a badge stuck to your chest, and the public will reckon you the best man for the job because of it. If you’re Bloggs Limited and you want to succeed, you’d better make a name for yourself, get out there and network, and deliver on your commitments.
- Regulation: Boy do you need that. I wouldn’t for a second disagree. When you provide legal services you play with people’s lives, and they need a fundamental reassurance that there is a legal framework for them to seek redress when you cock it up. What’s wrong with the system is the regulator itself - the SRA. Its huge, monolithic, inefficient, and worst of all its one-size-fits-all style of regulation prevents firms from competing effectively. You also need compulsory insurance for professional negligence, and most other professionals would do a double take at the premiums solicitors have to pay.
- Excellent value for money: Where solicitors lack at the moment is in charging innovation, as the Law21 blog notes every couple of weeks or so, and as I’ve rambled about previously.
This is all terribly sad, as it commercialises the role of solicitor which in previous days wasn’t simply a job, but a vocation. But solicitors haven’t changed for the worst, they’ve simply been outpaced by modern society. They must adapt and they must survive. The Law Society campaign is completely backwards - it tries to educate people that solicitors are the answer to their problems when this message is becoming less and less true every day. Their time and resources would be much better spent in engaging with their own profession on how to rescue the brand of ’solicitor’ and invest it with some meaning in the modern age.
Interesting post, thanks. Couple of issues I’d like to respond to:
1. Prof Indemnity Insurance - those firms who are paying huge PII premiums are perhaps those you identify as not delivering. It is possible, with proper management and risk assessment and client service to substantially reduce your PII premiums. For eg, when the market for PII first opened up, the small/medium “high street” firm with which I was involved had an annual premium of around £40k. Since then the firm has not got any smaller and turnover was about 25% higher. Last year it was £15k - with a £0 excess. Vigorous negotiation year on year with the broker has seen the premium reduce every year, this includes negotiation on premium but also pushing the firm’s risk management procedures and client satisfaction ratings.
2. Excellence. Couldn’t agree more. I think this is one area where solicitors may especially be complacent. Many partners have no comprehension of doing business in a truly competitive market and many are going to fall by the wayside when the Legal Services Act comes fully live. Even many of those firms who consider themselves to be “switched on” are going to be in for a big surprise. I am an non-legal manager in the legal field and it is disappointing that the warnings that I and my peers seem constantly to be giving are falling on deaf (or worse: indifferent) ears.
i agree with all (but one) of your sentiments and am grateful to learn the (several) things i didn’t know - but i must take issue with this:
‘This is all terribly sad, as it commercialises the role of solicitor’ - didn’t that happen the day some one first thought of charging for advice? as a necomer to the law (as you know) i am constntly surprised and amused by how its practicioners put themselves and their job on a pedestal. it’s a job, they get paid (usually fantastically well - and if you disagree try comparing the poorest most altruistic lawyer with those at the bottom of the arts pile) and nobody forces them to do it. other things are available to do with their lives; some of them involve getting sweaty and dirty (and not in a fun way) and earning rather less.
sure the job is important and (often) worthwhile (for instance the vital importance of the diana inquest to poor grieving mr fayed) but we are not talking feeding the poor or putting an end to war here.
it seems a god job, but let’s heave it off the pedestal so it can be better subjected to the scrutiny you so properly demand.
Sure, you start as a trainee at Herbert Smith you’ll be on nearly £40k. This post isn’t about them. If you work for a small ‘high street’ firm instead, which I’d guess a huge proportion of solicitors do, and you are, say, in the North West, coming out of uni (having self-funded £7,000 + maintenance for your LPC) you’ll get:
Two year training contract: £15,332 p.a. - minimum trainee salary
Year 1 qualified - £21,000-£26,000
Year 2 - £22,000-£27,000
Year 3 - £25,000-£30,000
Year 4 - £29,000-£33,000
details here
So you basically have to be in the job for six years before you’re guaranteed to be on £30,000. Is that monumental? Benefits (eg pension, holidays and so on) will be minimal. The salary in the later years is equivalent or (taking other benefits into account) significantly less than NQ teachers can expect. And look at them.
Solicitors are (whatever the age-old cynicism) just as much a fundamental part of social fabric as social workers, policemen, teachers, and the rest of them, but are reviled even at the ‘low’ end of the profession as somehow ripping everyone off.
Where I do agree is that if they don’t like it they should do something else. It’s only the market that should set salaries - but these are arguments you could use against striking public servants as easily as you could grumbling solicitors.