The lessons of will-writer regulation
Yesterday’s report on will-writing by the Legal Services Consumer Panel was more proof, if any were needed, that the Legal Services Act 2007 is anything but a deregulatory measure. Even the deregulation of business structures is hedged by a raft of new regulation. There are several points worth picking out of the report. First, it emphasises once more how critical reserved legal activities are to the future shape of the legal market.
The Battle of LASPO, starring referral fees as the Trojan horse
The Ministry of Justice seems in undue haste to push the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill – snappily nicknamed LASPO – through the House of Commons. Having broken parliamentary convention by not allowing two weekends between presenting the bill to Parliament and the second reading last week, the government wanted it to start the committee stage today. However, after protests from the opposition, this will now begin next Tuesday.
What price loyalty?
Many law firms have failed to recognise the importance of client care and how, by taking care of their clients, they will encourage their clients to take care of their firm. Building a loyalty ladder with your clients is more important at this stage than ever before. Why? We should all know the cost of obtaining a new client – it actually costs six times MORE to find a new client than it does to retain an existing one.
The tangled web of referral fees
The furore over referral fees has come out of nowhere. In the past three weeks, the Sunday Times, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Telegraph and, this week, The Times with the help of Jack Straw, have all climbed into the trade in claims. There has been an increasing focus on the role of insurance companies – referral fees’ most vehement critic – in actually fuelling them, which has certainly put the industry on the spot. The “if we don’t do it, everyone else will” argument put forward by the Association of British Insurers is not exactly an attractive one.
Putting the “service” into legal services (and having fun with law firm taglines)
It is often said that the commercial lawyers have less and less in common with their high street counterparts, but as the Financial Times/Managing Partners Forum survey demonstrates, both share the ability to not really understand what their clients want. The problem, it would seem, is that lawyers think they know what their clients want. Or, perhaps, they know what they think their clients should want.
