Marketing & PR

The impending ban on referral fees in personal injury could result in a “steep increase” in the number of financial failures amongst small law firms – but may not actually discourage spurious claims – the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.

The only winners in the online legal documents business are those supplying services to the likes of law firms, financial institutions and trade associations – rather than selling them directly to the end-user – new research has found. It warned that engineering online legal documents is not an end in itself.

A “disruptive” services procurement platform that allows small and medium-sized businesses to put out tenders to an expert community and manage them, all via the cloud, is set to enter the legal market.

Just eight personal injury brands dominate the web searches of potential clients, with national law firm Irwin Mitchell leading the way, new research has found. The report also found social media strategies “massively under-developed within the legal services sector”.

The prospect of paying referral fees in personal injury becoming a criminal offence seemingly disappeared last night, while the government defeated a bid to exempt not-for-profits from the ban and outlined its plans to crack down on unsolicited PI marketing.

Our latest round-up of news includes Fisher Meredith winning an appeal against a big wasted costs order, SRA figures on the number of firms and solicitors, the first law firm to ‘pin’ on growing social media service Pinterest, fee income up at the largest law firms, and more.

QualitySolicitors will this month launch the largest advertising campaign in the history of the legal profession ahead of a blitz that will see 8,000 adverts hit TV screens throughout May. The first of the new-look ads will be shown on Sunday 25 March, during the final of Dancing on Ice.

Lawyers2you is to become the first legal network to take on London when it launches its first franchise in the east of the city shortly, Legal Futures can reveal. The news comes after it faced criticism in the press for an A-board it used in central Birmingham.

Lawyers are focusing their search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics on the wrong keywords and can convert more work by targeting so-called ‘long tail’ keyword searches, digital marketing experts have claimed.

Law firms are overwhelmingly failing to follow up referrals for basic legal work from comparison websites, in what is described today as a “massive own goal by the profession”. In a mystery shopping exercise, eight out of ten online referral requests for a simple will were ignored.