Marketing & PR

Gus Sellitto, a director at legal PR specialists and Legal Futures Associate Byfield Consultancy, shares his top 10 tips on dealing with broadcast interviews

Personal injury and clinical negligence law firms facing competition from new entrants to the legal market need to change the way they market themselves, specialist legal outsourcing provider Collaboras warned this week.

QualitySolicitors is preparing to eject a member firm for failing to meet the network’s quality standards, its chief operating officer told the Legal Futures Conference yesterday. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson also questioned QS’s use of the word “quality” in the brand.

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint from a Yorkshire law firm about QualitySolicitors’ launch television advert. Hull-based Williamsons Solicitors challenged whether the advert misleadingly implied that customer feedback was the only criterion for assessing whether law firms were suitable to join the network.

A large majority of law firms believe they need to devote resources to social media because clients will increasingly be influenced by the strength of their presence in the sector, according to a survey.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is under pressure to ban solicitors from offering potential claimants up-front inducements to bring an action so as to bring them in line with new rules coming into force for claims management companies.

The reasons why one law firm succeeds while another doing similar work fails, boil down to knowing your market, committing to your sector and its clients, and the partners’ contribution, according to a legal thinktank.

The public believes that legal aid solicitors are not as good as other solicitors, research undertaken for the Law Society has found. Focus groups held in London and Birmingham either side of Christmas also revealed that the public think legal aid solicitors are paid private practice rates.

The crackdown on personal injury advertising started today as the Ministry of Justice unveiled plans to ban inducements to bring a claim. The current rules for claims management companies only ban the offer of “immediate” cash payments or similar benefits, but a consultation issued today proposes extending that to all inducements for making a claim.

Law firms are “markedly” worse at business development and client management than other professional services practices, research has found. The study also revealed that just 58% of lawyers who should be involved in business development at their firms actually are, far lower than other professionals.