The proposed new SRA regulations – fudged not focused?

A deafening silence when there should be debate…

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today published the ‘final draft’ of its move to principles-based regulation, which will see a radical overhaul of the current code of conduct, abolishing many of the current detailed rules in favour of 10 broad principles…. From Law Gazette 20/10/10

The proposed regulations appear fudged not focused. The previous ‘tick box’ method did not improve standards, but did give lawyers certainly as to compliance. It is assumed that non-compliance with these significant regulatory changes is not an option but currently there seems to be negligible interest. Is it unclear what is expected by the new rules? Are they being ignored for a reason or is the profession ready to adapt to the new regime?

The purpose of this document:

Do you want to be part of an entirely independent discussion using social media and discussion groups? The aim is to identify the key issues, clarify and categorise them, to form a consensus on compliance. The objective is to help provide constructive solutions to help law firms demonstrate compliance and quantifiable improvements in service to both the SRA and your clients.

We are seeking a rapid response from solicitors, service providers to law firms and other stakeholders. Your feedback would be welcome.

Background:

Before compliance would generally be achieved by going through the process and ‘ticking the boxes’. Now there is no ‘route map’ and a completely different approach required with the shift to ‘outcome focused regulation’, quite probably with methods showing evidence of measurement and progress.

As an example mandatory principle 5 of the currently proposed SRA handbook, states that solicitors must ‘provide a proper standard of service to your clients’. Two extracts from Chapter 1 of the proposed SRA Code of Conduct mention ‘Helping you and your clients understand each others expectations and responsibilities’ and ‘Ensuring you deliver competent legal services to clients’…

‘Where to start?’ may well be your first question, but for now here are the questions we’re asking:

1) Assuming the regulations cannot be ignored, what are the likely sanctions for not complying?

2) How and with what evidence are you going to be able to produce to showing you are complying with these provisions?

3) Do you think the new ‘guiding principles’ serve to improve standards as well as giving certainty to law firms on compliance? Please give your reasons.

4) SRA auditors used to have had clear criteria to follow and adopt, whereas the new rules introduce subjectivity – is this an alien concept auditors given their approach and training?

5) If the proposed regulations were quantified (where possible) to monitor improvements and solutions offered as to how to achieve these, would that be more helpful?

6) Do the proposed regulations make law firms more susceptible to SRA investigations/client complaints?

Please leave your comments/answers to the questions in the box below and send the link on to other interested parties in your network.

Client feedback and compliance - a service for law firms

The forthcoming ‘outcome focused regulation’ changes from the SRA will see measurement of client satisfaction become an integral part of regulatory compliance, and not just for those firms seeking Lexcel accreditation.

Regular client surveys are a key tool for evaluating client satisfaction, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and highlighting new sales opportunities. But they are time consuming and take up internal resources and time that could be used more productively.

To put the need for this service in context the proposed regulatory changes will see client satisfaction move sharply up the agenda with the shift to ‘outcome focused regulation’. Mandatory principle 5 of the currently proposed SRA handbook, states that solicitors must ‘provide a proper standard of service to your clients’.

In addition attention is drawn to two extracts from Chapter 1 of the proposed SRA Code of Conduct ‘Helping you and your clients understand each others expectations and responsibilities’ and ‘Ensuring you deliver competent legal services to clients’.

Help is at hand...

...from Legallybetter.com - the independent interactive solicitor directory. Smaller law firms can obtain client feedback in a quick, confidential, and efficient way… and save money at the same time.

Legallybetter’s new Client Feedback Service , operated in association with a well-established market research agency IRN Research, is a money saver for any law firm spending hundreds or even thousands of pounds or more a year on measuring client feedback (e.g. spending on both management and staff time, designing and printing feedback forms, postage, storing and analysing results).

In addition, use of the Legally Better Client Feedback Service will provide evidence in support of compliance with the new regulations rather than law firms having to create and administer their own client satisfaction process.

How one law firm is already saving money and improving client feedback

One of the first law firms to use the service is already saving money and getting a better client response. This is what the Personal Injury Practice law firm says:

“Prior to joining Legallybetter we used to send out a paper survey to clients with a reply paid envelope. This cost a lot in time, money, and stamps! Each letter cost us about £2 to prepare and send so the overall cost to us was over £1000 a year. To make matters worse the response rate was very poor.

Now we use the Legallybetter Client Feedback Service and a quarterly report allows me to monitor individual client’s experiences and to see which areas of our service are not performing. It also ensures that we continue to comply with Lexcel requirements, without the time and expense of posting out satisfaction surveys.

The cost of £30 per quarter is a fraction of the cost of our old procedure, saving us nearly £1000 per year and the client response rate is many times what we achieved using the post. In short, it works like a dream and as we progress toward Lexcel accreditation, there is one area of compliance that I don’t have to worry about.”

Further details about the service, which starts at just £120 a year for high street law firms, can be found at:
http://www.legallybetter.com/documents/LB%20Client%20Survey%20Case%20Study.pdf

The prices above cover pre-set client feedback questions but also offered is a more detailed, customised survey for law firms with the Legallybetter questions integrated into it. An example of a more detailed survey can be found at:
http://www.irn-research.com/surveys/csqlegal.htm

Legallybetter's Client Feedback Survey is operated in association with research agency IRN Research. IRN is a full member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and complies with the Data Protection Act to ensure that all survey results are treated anonymously.

Tesco Law - Worried you might end up stacking shelves?

Michaela Hardwick of Beyond Expectations highlights strategic opportunities for law firms from the Legal Services Act (LSA)

The big talk and opinion in legal circles at the moment is about the impact that the introduction of ABSs is going to have on the legal profession. I'm afraid to say I find this incredibly reactive and I do hope that there are plenty of firms out there who are quietly and strategically considering how they can best take advantage of the changes which the LSA 2007 will allow, including the regulatory changes in the form of OFR (Outcome Focused Regulation).

The SRA consultation paper, "Achieving the right outcomes" sets out that one of the benefits of OFR will be flexibility and innovation and states that this new approach "presents challenges for firms in determining for themselves the approach to delivering the right outcomes for clients". So how will your firm rise to this challenge?

Click here to read the rest of the article - then let us know your thoughts.

Increasing use of the internet and recommendations when looking for solicitor

More and more consumers are embracing the Internet as a route to finding a solicitor, according to new independent research from YouGov PLC for Legallybetter.com

While recommendations from friends, relatives, and colleagues are still by far the most important method of choosing a law firm or solicitor, Web sources are the next most important channels.

Alongside general search engines like Google, Yahoo etc, the survey points to a clear interest in Web sites containing consumer reviews and ratings of law firms and solicitors suggesting that word of mouth marketing about legal services is moving increasingly to the Web.

The results are another wake-up call to any law firm which has yet to build up its presence online and focus its marketing towards the Internet. The key results are:

• Over 60% of those surveyed would take recommendations from friends, relatives, or work colleagues.
• The second most important method of choosing a solicitor – mentioned by 21% of those surveyed – would be to use a search engine (Google, Yahoo etc).
• Web sites with independent consumer reviews and ratings of law firms and solicitors were the third most popular method – mentioned by 20% of those surveyed.
• Next in line would be advice from Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) and other local agencies noted by 18% of the survey and then come traditional channels like Yellow Pages and other local directories mentioned by 16% of respondents.
• Some way behind are price comparison sites for law firms - favoured by only 10% - suggesting that many consumers have yet to be convinced that legal services can be compared just on price.

All figures unless otherwise stated are from YouGov PLC. Total sample size was 2,266 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 2nd-4th March 2010. The figures have been adjusted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

If you would like more information about the survey, contact David Mort (Client Marketing Director at legallybetter.com) by email to david.mort@legallybetter.com

Do solicitors value their reputation as a marketing tool?

The following statement was made to me by a solicitor ‘Clients often do not fully understand what they are buying, hence any client review is meaningless’. I take the opposite view – it is because clients don’t know exactly what they’re buying that they rely on reviews from others.

My question is – ‘Do solicitors value their reputation as a marketing tool?’

A few observations:

• People will ‘buy’ on reputation but many law firms don’t seem to want to ‘sell’ themselves on that basis.
• Is this part of that strange paradox where collectively solicitors seem sometimes not particularly highly thought of; but individually, between the client and the solicitor, the trust is absolute.
• The bigger picture must be ‘How to leverage the role of the trusted advisor?’; to engage more regularly with clients and potential clients by providing services that clients would be happy to purchase from their legal advisers.
• Competing on price makes no sense at all and client’s perceptions of value are certainly not just about the cost of legal advice.

I would be most interested to hear your views

Law firms can compete - but they will have to start now.

'Isn't the real threat to lawyers other lawyers rather than Tesco, the AA etc?' is an interesting question posted by James Dunning on the Law Society's Gazette LinkedIn page. Below is my comment in response to the question.

As has been stated by Craig, brands are that very powerful ‘shortcut to help people decide’. Consumers trust many FMCG brands they’re familiar and they purchase them regularly - that’s why they can often be stretched in so many directions. Buying legal services is an irregular, often distress purchase. It is maybe perceived as a more difficult marketing task than consumer goods, but not by any means impossible.

My guess is that 50% of consumers looking for legal advice will be attracted to the services of the new providers, for the reasons that Craig makes clear. Brand awareness in the easily commoditised areas of law will be key to success. That requires ongoing marketing activity that many existing providers have been reluctant to invest in. So those law firms may move into what they perceive to be ‘less competitive areas’ – along with many of their existing competitors…

How may law firms lose clients simply because they have not been in contact with them? Because of not investing say 5% of their turnover on marketing to retain existing business?

Not a mistake the new providers will make - we can be sure of that. As Jon says above, they must see an open gate to the legal services sector – in the areas of law they choose to operate in. A highly diversified existing market (with ‘000s of existing providers and few clear brand/market leaders) will become very competitive, commoditised and potentially as ubiquitous as retail financial services.

But - price isn’t everything, service counts - as does reputation. 85% of consumers choose a solicitor as a result of a recommendation. Monitoring client satisfaction is ignored by far too many law firms; mining their client database likewise, the latter an often underused and yet very significant asset. For the firms that do maximise relationships with their existing clients before the (very) imminent arrival of the new competition they stand an improved chance of survival.

Elsewhere twice as many people now use the internet, rather than Yellow Pages or other local directories, to find a solicitor when compared to 2 years ago. Existing providers can offer online legal services to younger clients those that don’t wish to use traditional service delivery methods. There are IT firms starting to offer these services to high street solicitors – those investing here see what their clients needs will be, not were.

I’ve mentioned before the big question for existing providers is ‘How to leverage the role of the trusted advisor?’ - to engage more regularly with clients and potential clients by providing and delivering services that clients would be happy to purchase from their legal advisers.

A Guide to Online Social Networking for Law Firms

‘An introduction to Online Social Networking for Law Firms’ is a new guide just finished. It gives solicitors a practical introduction to the subject and shows how these tools can be used to real effect by law firms.

Features include: the changing use of the internet, the new reality for law firms, getting started: creating your profile, promoting your presence, blogging etc

Initial feedback from law firm contacts and other associates has been very positive. Let us know if you would like to receive a copy via email.