Marketing & PR

Law firms are in a “race to the middle” when it comes to pricing their services and consumers are happy with what they are receiving, new research has found.

The government is set to finally make good on its pledge to make the directors of companies which make unsolicited nuisance calls personally liable if their firm breaks the law. The announcement yesterday generated big tabloid headlines, but in fact the government made the same one more than 18 months ago but did not act on it.

Two former partners of leading City law firms have launched an online legal directory venture that they hope will replace the traditional printed directories. Top3legal enables client recommendations to be linked to an existing database of 156,000 lawyers, assembled from publicly available information.

A business specialising in trade mark advice and registration must stop claiming to be the “UK’s no.1 trade mark service”, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled. It said Trade Mark Direct made the claim on the basis that it believed it had registered more applications than any other firm in the last three years.

The government’s insistence on pressing ahead with a ban on cold-calling by claims management companies (CMCs) that many argue does not go far enough will be put to the test today. MPs will consider the changes made during the committee stage of the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill and various further amendments put forward by the Labour opposition.

A lead generation website and connected mobile app designed to put younger consumers of legal services in touch with solicitors between appointments by tapping directly into their electronic diaries, will launch later this year.

All of the 3,000 law firms accredited under the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme need to ensure they are not using in their own marketing the society’s description of the scheme that was yesterday ruled to be misleading, it has emerged.

Law Society advertising of its Conveyancing Quality Scheme “misleadingly exaggerated the membership requirements” to make it sound like the accreditation process is more rigorous than is actually the case, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

Efforts to recruit an initial 2,500 barristers to direct access website MyBarrister failed miserably, it has emerged in a court ruling that details an ongoing dispute with the recruiters charged with signing them up. “These were, as things turned out, demanding targets,” the judge observed.

SME law firms are investing their marketing budgets in old-style strategies they know are often ineffective, rather than explore new technologies that are already taking hold in other sectors, according to research being launched at today’s PI Futures conference in Liverpool.