Is it surprising that we are so little loved?
According to Professor Gillian Hadfield of the University of Southern California, we live in a world that is “flooded with law”. Surely lawyers, with their training, experience and understanding of legal issues, should be overwhelmed with demand for their help in navigating a safe route through our daily existence? Yet all the evidence suggests otherwise.
The pricing priority
The pricing function in most law firms is something of an orphan. No-one knows who it belongs to, so it ends up belonging to no-one. Individual department heads and fee-earners make decisions on the fly with little regard to the firm’s pricing policies, processes and protocols. Oh, that’s right, we don’t have any firm-wide pricing policies, processes and protocols to speak of. If I had to isolate a single factor that contributes most to the failure of a firm’s pricing strategy, it is a lack of pricing leadership. Yes, senior partners, managing partners and CEOs, I am speaking directly to you.
Is that it for ABSs?
There will be plenty of lawyers crowing over the failure of In-Deed Online. Expect a lot of “I told you so-ing”. It will be used as evidence that alternative business structures (ABSs) are flawed and that the much-heralded change in the legal market will prove to be a bust. But I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to those conclusions.
Feel the quality?
Here’s a question that’s been bothering me of late – what, exactly, is a quality legal service? You’ll have noticed that this phrase has become so common that it no longer requires an adjective (unless it’s poor quality). Many seem to think that if you say often enough that you provide one, it must be true. It has come to the fore with the debate over criminal legal aid. First there is the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA). This elides ‘quality’ with competence. “The aim of QASA,” says the application to the Legal Services Board for approval of the scheme, “is to assess and assure the competence of all advocates conducting criminal advocacy in courts in England and Wales.”
Where are all the consumer ABSs?
Cracking the non-PI consumer legal market could be the biggest prize yet. So why, asks Simon Goldhill of Legal Futures Associate Simon Goldhill Consultancy, is everyone looking the other way?
Law is big business. According to the latest government figures, the UK market generates over £26bn per annum. Recent analyses suggest that just under half of that comes from the business and commercial sector. Of the rest, £3.5bn relates to personal injury (PI) and £1.5bn to crime. That means that the non-PI consumer legal market in the UK is worth around £8bn per annum. This is equivalent to the entire 2012 turnover of the UK’s creative, arts and entertainment services industry.
