Vulnerable clients: Move away from individual adjustments
There should be a “fundamental alteration” in the way the legal sector approaches consumer vulnerability, taking an opt-out, rather than opt-in, approach, a study for the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has argued.
The “risk-based approach” to vulnerability may not be appropriate and it would be better to understand it as “universal”.
This would be “inherently inclusive and accommodating to the needs of all consumers without necessitating individualised adjustments”.
Law firms could embrace this approach through “empowering interviews”, with questions “that ground the provider-consumer relationship in trust and understanding” and ascertain the consumer’s priorities.
Independent third parties should be called in to help lawyers empower individuals, as well as using “lived experts to engage with consumers throughout the provision of legal services” and “peer-led groups or community listeners”.
The SRA commissioned academics from the University of South Wales to conduct a feasibility study on whether and how it could measure and monitor consumer vulnerability in the legal market.
The study was based on an extensive literature review and data from 54 individuals, representing “a broad range of stakeholder groups including lived experts” in various kinds of vulnerability.
The report argued that consumer vulnerability was “widely acknowledged as a complex, diverse, dynamic, and fluid concept” which was “difficult to define and challenging to identify and measure”.
Instead of “defining vulnerability based on risk factors that may render individuals susceptible to harm, loss, disadvantage, or poorer outcomes”, they called for the adoption of a “universal practice” approach.
This meant, for example, that instead of accessible communication in a particular format only being offered to consumers identified as vulnerable, “the wording of all legal letters would change to using intelligible language and with automated translation”.
All consumers “routinely would have the opportunity to receive and respond to communication in their preferred format via, for instance, a screen reader and recording a voice memo”.
The academics went on: “We advocate prioritising creating a system inherently inclusive and accommodating to the needs of all consumers without necessitating individualised adjustments.
“This system necessitates that service providers may need to re-evaluate the design of their products and service frameworks so that they are accessible to all consumers, although at other times there may be small changes to be made and ‘easy wins’.
“The principle would be that all consumers are offered a full range of access and communication options from which they can opt-out rather than opt-in.”
The research found a “lack of support” for the risk-factor approach underpinning the measurement of vulnerability in the legal sector, and participants “ultimately did not view measuring consumer vulnerability as valuable”.
Instead, the evidence provided “a strong rationale” for the universal practice approach.
“The difference between universal practice and differential services or products/modifications in provision is that the former does not necessitate individualised modifications as it takes into account the plethora of needs at the point of design.”
The academics said universal practice “would be a shift, requiring resources, and there is a risk some cost may be passed to consumers”.
However, universal practice “should also result in savings from dealing with fewer complaints and increased revenue from the retention of satisfied consumers and from increased new business from consumers where there are improvements in terms of accessibility and trust”.
The academics said that to implement the universal practice approach, the SRA should make policy changes, for example by citing universal practice in its statement of solicitor competence and “developing new standards of universal practice”.
The language of consumer vulnerability should be rejected as “labelling and/or stigmatising”, and instead consumers empowered by “fostering respect”.
The SRA should also “issue guidance on universal practice” and provide resources on ‘easy wins’, such as empowering interviews and the use of independent third parties and lived experts.
The regulator said it would now liaise with other stakeholders “to identify the feasibility of, and responsibilities for, taking forward the universal practice approach in the legal sector”.
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