Posted by Dave Seager, consulting adviser to Legal Futures Associate SIFA Professional
Seager: Consumers like local advisers
At SIFA Professional, we eagerly await the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s annual tracker survey each July, particularly the part that examines how consumers choose their legal services provider.
We always look to ensure our financial planning member firms are kept well informed on how best to support and collaborate with their solicitor connection, and understanding consumer trends is equally as important to that end as regulation.
As such, we decided to use this popular blog to offer our top 10 insights gleaned from this year’s tracker (see also Legal Futures‘ report).
1. Shopping around
Some 41% of consumers shopped around this year, compared to 39% in 2023. With 42% looking at three solicitor websites, the clarity and ease of exploring your website is vital.
2. Transparency
Worryingly, only 61% of those asked found it easy to find information on services, staff biographies or likely timelines on solicitor sites, which is down five percentage points on last year. This is not about Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) rules on transparency but about selling your quality online.
3. Regulated solicitors win the day
The panel found that 90% of consumers opt for regulated legal services providers, with 63% choosing a solicitor. Be sure your website clearly portrays the SRA logo so consumers know and can take confidence in the protections that provides.
4. Reputation and price remain key
Reputation and price remain the most prevalent factors in consumers’ decision-making. Therefore, how you convey the quality of your services and those who deliver them is critical. Qualifications, awards and independent testimonial seem the logical ways to illustrate your quality.
5. Price comparison/customer review sites
Despite the pressure from the Legal Services Board and, in turn, the SRA to have quality indicators, the number of consumers who selected a provider via a price comparison or review website dropped to an insignificant 3%. This indicates that other methods, including those described above, must still be more important.
6. Good value for money
Congratulations, the highest percentage of consumers since the tracker began in 2012 (70%) felt they had received value for money.
Despite price being a prevalent factor in choice, this does not always mean cheap and cheerful. Value for money is a combination of the price and the quality of the service, and what’s included within that price.
This is another reason why fulsome detail of the stages and what is entailed in the service, as well as the qualification and experience of who will deliver it, should be clear to a researching potential client.
7. Recommendation remains king
If we look at the top three reasons for a consumer choosing a particular firm, then the importance of personal referral is obvious – 39% chose their provider because they or a family member had used that provider previously or had been referred to them by a satisfied family member or friend.
How crucial, then, to follow up with your clients, gain feedback and testimonial, and even ask how likely they are to recommend your firm to a friend or family member.
8. Professional referral
The third most popular reason for provider selection, which has increased on previous years to 13%, is referral from another professional organisation. Given that this referral will only be accepted based on trust, the most obvious referees are accountants or financial planners, like SIFA Professional members.
9. Local offices/convenience
The third driver, after reputation and price, is where you are. People like dealing with firms local to their home or work. This being the case, it seems logical to talk about your local reputation on your website, and perhaps whether you support or sponsor local sports teams, organisations or charities.
10. Local professional referral
Combining the two previous insights suggests that one of the key factors in your due diligence on which financial planners and accountants your firm will refer to, should include local proximity and reputation.
If your clients have chosen you because of where you are and they need complementary advice, then obviously they will anticipate your recommending them to a local firm you trust.
The customer, as they say, is always right, so it makes perfect business sense to listen to, respect and act on their preferences.
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