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Contact Law – making Tesco Law work for solicitors

Contact Law are big players in the solicitors referral field. The company was started in 2005 by James Vintin and Dan Watkins as they felt that there was an opening for a service to help members of the public find a suitable solicitor. They were also interested in developing services to help solicitors deal with the deregulation of legal services, to be brought about by the Legal Services Act.

The Contact Law service works by potential clients first contacting them. This will either be via their web-site www.contactlaw.co.uk (they are very highly placed by Google for some 150,000 law related search words) or via one of their partnerships, for example with big brand names such as the Daily Telegraph.

The Contact Law case handlers will then talk to the client to find out more about their case. If they do not appear to be suitable for referral (for example if they have no budget and the case is not one suitable for no win no fee) they will normally be referred to another organisation, such as the Citizens Advice Bureau. If the case appears to be a good one, it will be referred to one of the Contact Law member firms. All member firms are obliged by their service agreement to contact the client within four hours. After that it is a matter for the firm how they deal with the case.

What experience have member firms had? Three people I spoke to, Colin Carr, new business manager of Rollingsons Solicitors, Duncan McNair partner with Child and Child, and Peter Todd partner at Hodge Jones & Allen all confirmed that their firms are very satisfied with the service, and that they would be staying with the company long term.

Rollingsons have been with Contact Law almost from the beginning. They have been very pleased with the quality of the work referred to them, and in particular have received good referrals for family and employment law.

Child and Child joined more recently, some 12 months ago. Duncan McNair told me that his firm chose Contact Law because “there are many in the field but Contact Law stood out to me from my enquiries”. Referrals are currently about 10 per month and he is happy with this, although not all referrals turn into cases. But overall he is extremely pleased.

Hodge Jones & Allen joined about 18 months ago, attracted by the method of charging. Peter Todd: “The basic charging model is that they charge 15% of fees billed.  This means that you can receive referrals from them without any cost.  If a referral does not proceed, then there is no charge.  If, however, it goes on to generate fees, then there is a percentage fee.  This cannot apply to personal injury work, as it would otherwise be an unenforceable contingency agreement.  There are advantages for firms in cash-flow in this arrangement and also that the cost incurred is directly related to the revenue generated for the firm.”

So far as the work referred is concerned, “Overall, I would say the experience has been good.  Although the quality of referrals can be variable, this is always the case in any form of marketing and often there are some really good referrals, albeit mixed in with some poor ones.  At least the poor ones only involve your time in sorting them out.” He estimates that they receive in the region of 30 referrals a month.

How do firms become Contact Law panel members? Most firms apply, and selection is based on signs of quality within the firms. Lexcel or some other accreditation is generally helpful, but not necessarily essential. However, probably the most important part of the assessment takes place after work has been referred, as there is a rigorous program of customer feedback. James Vintin explained “We will contact clients at certain pre –set intervals, for example shortly after referral, when the work is underway, and after completion of the work. The responses are fed back into our software, which will help inform our caseworkers when referring work. Ultimately the amount of work we will send a firm will depend very much on client feedback.”

The firms mentioned above are all based in London. What about firms in more rural areas? Kester Cunningham John, an East Anglian firm, have had a different experience. They joined Contact Law in 2007, but left 18 months later in spring 2009 after reaching the conclusion that that what had seemed a good idea in principle was not working in the East Anglian market place. Marketing manager Mary Porch explains:

“In market towns there is a sense of community and people talk to each other.  So, in reality, most people who need legal advice will either have used a local firm before, or have a friend, work colleague or family member who has.  The majority of those who are ready to pay for advice will be faced with a choice between several local or regional firms whose names they know.  So, by default, the majority of people coming the Contact Law route are doing so because they are looking for a cheap solution.  The time spent following up the dead-end leads was too great to make it worth carrying on with the scheme in search of an occasional gem.  It is almost certainly a business concept which works much better in larger more anonymous cities, and for firms who are able to offer public funding for a wide range of their services.”

For those firms in ‘anonymous cities , however, the Contact Law service is likely to prove very beneficial. Peter Todd: “Whilst solicitors may regret a “middle man” coming between them and the consumer, on the other hand solicitors are not necessarily skilled at marketing.  I see no particular reason why firms cannot outsource their marketing costs to agencies such as Contact Law.  Contact Law do provide value to the consumer in that they are able to put the consumer in touch with a solicitor who has the expertise to handle their case and moreover is actually willing and keen to do that sort of case.  This can save a consumer a lot of hard work in shopping around.  There is also” he added, “nothing to prevent solicitors from increasing their hourly rates by 15% to cover the costs, so that effectively the work funds itself.” An interesting thought.

Contact Law were recently acquired by Thomson Reuters, and this has allowed them far greater resources, in particular for marketing. They are eager to expand their service and their future plans are very exciting.

James Vinter : “We are now talking to big brand names, such as supermarkets and similar organisations. These companies want to provide a legal service, but will not generally want to employ a team of lawyers to do the case work themselves. We can provide a white label service which they can outsource to, with service level agreements with quality solicitors firms to do the work. This makes our service very attractive to these big brand names. The brand names will earn by taking a share in our referral fee, but the 15% we charge the solicitors will not be changed. In this way we can make Tesco Law work for our member firms, as legal work for clients acquired by big brand companies under their legal service, will actually still be done by regular solicitors firms.”

In conclusion, whether Contact Law will work for your firm will depend to a large extent on the sort of firm you have and where you are based. For city firms, Contact Law looks like an excellent service, and one which may (for their member firms) lessen, if not banish altogether, the spectre of Tesco Law which hovers over us all. However clearly the service does not work for everyone, and perhaps firms in the smaller market towns may be best off relying more on their local reputation and contacts.

With thanks to James Vinter. Colin Carr, Duncan McNair, Peter Todd and Mary Porch.

Note - this article was first published in the Internet Newsletter (November/December 2009 issue).

Grant Griffiths' 31 day 'butt kicking" course for bloggers

American lawyer and blogger Grant Griffiths is going to be running a campaign during October (2009) which he is calling "31 Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt". 

Every day he will be posting to his blog and emailing out to those who have signed up:

- A discussion or teaching component 

- A task/homework/assignment component 

The idea being to encourage flagging bloggers by getting them to learn by doing stuff, and, to use the words of Mr Griffiths himself, to "kick your blog in the butt so it is actually working for you". It sounds fun. You can read more and sign up here.

E Newsletters - Part 2

In part 1 we looked at e-newsletters and why they were a good idea. Here we are going to take a look at what you can put in them. 

The main reason you will be writing your newsletter is to get people to engage with your firm and hopefully instruct you to do work. However when writing anything for the public, you need to forget about what you want and think about what they want. If readers do not find your newsletter interesting and relevant to them, they will not read it. And it is very easy for them to consign it forever to the spam bin, with just one click of the mouse. 

So what you need to do is give them a bit of what they want, and use this to show of your expertise and advertise your services. By way of example, below is an indication of what I do. My newsletter is on residential landlord and tenant law, and readers are mostly private landlords, letting agents, property investors, and a sprinkling of tenants, lawyers, academics, housing advisors, and anyone else who is interested. 

I start off with a general introduction. This welcomes them to the newsletter and mentions things of particular interest, for example an important legal development which they ought to know about. 

Below this I have an hyperlinked index, so readers can jump down to whatever section of the newsletter interests them most. At the end of every section in the body of the newsletter, is a ‘back to contents’ link, so they can navigate around easily. 

As my newsletter is aimed at private residential landlords and tenants, I start off with a tip for landlords and a tip for tenants. The tips are actually fairly substantial pieces of advice on a specific topic (for example relating to tenancy deposits or possession notices), not just 'one liners'. I know that the tips are popular, as a property journal asked if they could reproduce them, which they regularly do (giving more more exposure!). 

The tips are followed with a short section giving information on where readers can find out more about the subject on my web-site, and/or related legal services I offer. As I ran an online legal information service, I then have a section explaining one aspect of of my service (a different one each month), and how to use it. 

This is followed by a list of new services added to the site in the past month, followed by a list of new topics on my members discussion forum. 

There then follows a series of sections which tend to stay the same, but are put there for reference. For example a list of special offers, details about my books and some of my services, e.g. my repossession service, a list of my speaking engagements, and a few paragraphs which are actually advertising copy which I get paid for. 

Quite some way down (but accessible very quickly via the contents links if readers want to jump down to it) is a news section. This includes new legal developments in the landlord and tenant area, new legal cases, new reports and surveys, and anything else I find which I think will be of interest to my readers. I gather these from rss feeds, articles from the housing section of the excellent Legal Action Magazine, and things discovered from general reading. 

So, to summarise, the newsletter contains two main sections which are of value to readers - the tips and the news. It also contains some other changing sections about my services which they may or may not be interested in, and a number of other sections which tend to stay the same from month to month, which are there by way of reference. Readers can easily avoid reading things they do not want to via the naviagtiaon links, but as they are there, they will often at least glance through them. 

I would suggest you do something similar. Have a certain amount of really useful information which will be the reason why people will want to read the newsletter, some news, which is also really useful and will keep them up to date which they will be grateful for, and also put in information about your services which although they may not read this in detail, will at least be there for inform them about your services, if they want to know (and after reading your newsletter they might do!). 

Mind you I don't claim to have all the answers, this model has worked well for me but you may have a different way of doing things. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions for doing it differently, or indeed if you just want to comment generally.  

Part 3 in this series will look at ways you can implement all this in practice. Incidentally if you are interested in my newsletter, you can sign up here.

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Quality Solicitors - the Scottish Experience

About a month or so ago I was asked by Delia Venables of The Internet Newsletter (discussed in my previous post here) to write an article about the new Quality Solicitors organisation (discussed by me previously here).  The article has now been written and you will be able to read it in the Internet Newsletter September 09 issue.  However as part of my research I wrote up my interview with Brian Inkster, of Scottish firm Inksters.  Rather than waste it, I though it might be nice to publish it here.  It is written in the first person as Brian speaking.  He has approved its contents.

"Our firm, Inksters, is a small general chambers practice. I am a sole practitioner with one associate solicitor and a trainee, shortly to be two trainees. We do most things except crime, but it is mostly family / property related work. I also have a specialisation in crofting law.

In January 2009 I met the organisers of Quality Solicitors Organisation (QSO) at a marketing conference in London. It was a chance meeting. At that time they were fairly far on in their development of their new service. After talking to them we both thought that Inksters would be a good fit for their first Scottish firm.

One of the main things which attracted me to QSO was the quality aspect, as this fitted in with what we were doing ourselves. QSO is much more than a paid for referral list. The company only take on firms who they consider are suitable, and their work is subject to quality control. This is done by clients being asked to give feedback on their experience, which is done by the head office. If a firm proves to be unsatisfactory, it will be asked to leave the group. I like the fact that there is an independent third party review in this way.

The company require all of its English solicitors to have Lexcel accreditation, however this is not possible for us as there is no similar scheme in Scotland. However the procedures we have put in place satisfied QSO that we were working in the right way for them.

It is very early days for QSO. We joined on 11 May 2009 which was co-incidentally the day they launched officially (although the service had been running in a quiet way before that in England). We did a lot of marketing for them in Scotland which included articles about our membership in the local, national and legal press.

So far as we are concerned it is a bit of an unknown quantity, and we will have to see how things work out. We are all on a learning curve, both the management and the solicitor member firms. From what I have seen so far the company seems to be well run, and the directors are actively driving things forward. They are also quick to develop and learn from mistakes made, which is very good. It is also good that the MD, Craig Holt, is a barrister, so he understands the profession and how we work.

Potential clients contact QSO either via their web-site http://www.qualitysolicitors.com or by ringing their enquiry line. QSO then consider the information provided and refer on to a suitable firm as appropriate. Referrals information can be given either by email or by telephone or both. We opted for both so we could be sure that nothing got missed. The information provided consists of a summary of the case and the name and contact details of the clients. It is a condition of being a QSO solicitor that we contact the client within a couple of hours of receiving the referral information.

How things proceed after that is up to us. We do not have to take a client on if we feel the work is not appropriate for us, however in that case we should ask QSO to refer them to another firm. This would be a bit difficult for us at the moment of course being the only firm in Scotland!

We have already received referrals, indeed I was surprised at the number we received so early on. Some of them have been converted to clients, other may do in the future None of the cases we have taken on have been concluded yet so we have yet to see the feedback procedure in action.

There is of course a fee payable for being a member of QSO, the details of which are confidential. The cost is in bands depending on whether we want just local referrals or referrals from a wider area. However, the company operate a cost guarantee so if our fees do not equal the membership fee, this will be reduced accordingly the following year.

The benefits of being a QSO member do not stop at just referrals however. Several firms have reported that they have had clients going to them simply because they have seen the Quality Solicitors logo. The management are also assisting member firms by introducing a members buying group and are currently looking at CPD training.

I have been happy with the service so far, although as I said it is still early days. We will be taking a view generally at the end of the first year."

Note - to read my article and subscribe to the Internet Newsletter, visit the website here.    

Blogging – Part 1

As most people will know, a blog is a sort of online diary – the name is a shorted form of weblog. The blog owner will blog ‘posts’ which will appear in a list with the most recent at the top.

Blogs have been around for some time, and most people are familiar with them. There are hundreds of millions of them around, ranging from blogs with just a few posts which no-one wants to read by someone no-one has ever heard of, to highly influential blogs read by millions every day.

Most newspapers will have at least one blog, and some will have many, kept by their journalists on particular topics, for example The Times and The Guardian. Perhaps the most popular of these is the American Huffington Post blog. Many TV channels will also have blogs, for example Robert Peston of the BBC and Jon Snow of Channel Four.

Many businesses now have blogs. Some will be anodyne company speak which will be largely ignored, others will be interesting and worth reading. You may have a blog for your firm. Many solicitors firms do now. I have written the Landlord Law Blog for my business since February 2006.

Many of the best known blogs are anonymous. Most of you will have heard of the blog by Belle de Jour, a London call girl. This became so famous that it was published as a book, and there has been a TV show based on it starring Billie Piper. Another anonymous blog recently in the news was that written by Night Jack, a policeman who told it like it was, which was closed down after The Times discovered and published his identity (after a court case seeking to preserve his identity failed).

There are many anonymous legal blogs, for example Nearly Legal which covers housing law cases, Geeklawyer an intellectural property barrister, and Baby Barista who blogs for The Times. Law Blogs are sometimes called Blawgs, for obvious reasons.

Although there are many more lawyers blogging now, we have come fairly late to the blogging scene. When I started there were just a handful, mainly John Bloches excellent Family Lore blog, The Charon QC blog, and Geeklawyer. There are far more legal bloggers (as you would expect) in America. Two well known ones are Susan Cartier Liebel's Solo Practice blog (and since I first knew her, her consultancy for sole practitioners has turned into a University) and Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

But why write a blog? We will look at that next.

Social Media – Whats the point? (Part 2)

Contacts. Social media is an excellent way of keeping in touch with your contacts. “But” I hear you say, “I can do that via my address book. Why do I need to do this on the internet?”. Well you can of course, just rely on traditional methods. But social media goes a step further and provides a more positive way you can keep in touch.

Firstly, there is less danger that you will lose touch with people as a result of their moving away or changing firms or telephone numbers. Assuming that they keep their Facebook or Linkedin account (and most people will), you can always contact them via this. And they will be able to contact you.

Secondly, if they are active in social networking, you can also keep tabs on what they are doing. For example you might learn that they have set up a new company, or are launching a new product. If you are active in keeping your account up to date, all your contacts will know, for example, if you develop a new service, or write a book.

This may open up possibilities for business. For example if you have just written an article on business tenancies, and one of your contacts is considering renting new premises, this may prompt them to instruct you and your firm to act for them. Or you may find that the office widgets they have developed are just the thing your office manager has been looking for.

Thirdly, when you connect with a contact online via social medial, you also get to see who their contacts are. All sorts of things can develop from this. You may get back in touch with someone you knew years ago. You may learn of someone offering a service you require, or they may find out about you. The possibilities are endless.

Contacts and people and making connections are at the heart of social media. It is a new way of connecting with people and can be a very productive one. Its worth a try!

If one door closes ...

In his book ‘The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the nature of legal services’ Richard Susskind predicts that the current structure and method of working in legal firms cannot last, and that traditional legal practice is due for big changes over the next 20 years. 

A report in the Times today seems to indicate that this day is nearer than many people might have thought. The article claims that some 10,000 lawyers will lose their jobs in the next two years. For those remaining, things will never be the same again, with reports of equity parters losing their equity and being forced to take pay cuts, lawyers being offered ‘commission only deals’, and others only being hired if they can show a ‘dependable client following’. Difficult times indeed. 

My advice to those losing their jobs is to forget about going back into traditional practice, but to have a long think about how you can use your specialist knowledge in a more innovative way. For example there are many ways that one can start a new business reasonably easily using the internet, and with a large proportion of people on broadband nowadays, the internet is a good place to be. 

To use a couple of cliches, think of it as an opportunity rather than a threat. You may end up deciding that losing your job was the best thing that ever happened to you.

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E-newsletters - Part 1

If you have a web-site, you need some way to capture the contact details of those who visit, so you can keep in touch with them, and stay in the forefront of their minds. Then (so the theory goes) when they need a solicitor they will think of you first.

The standard way of doing this is by offering a ‘free’ newsletter. This must offer something of value, or people will not sign up. Most contain news items, articles and tips on the newsletter subject matter, and general information about the firm (i.e. new services, staff members, etc).

I have run a newsletter for years. I have two, one for members of my Landlord-Law service (a subscription site providing information and resources for private residential landlords and tenants), and a free one which anyone can sign up to. Although in point of fact they are actually more or less the same. The chief difference is that the members version cuts out the paragraph suggesting that they join up!

The main reasons why people like my newsletters are the tips (one for landlords and one for tenants) which are always at the top, and the news section. Readers appreciate being kept up to date and made aware of significant legal changes in their area of work or interest.

There are many landlords and tenants (and letting agents and solicitors) who signed up for my free newsletter who have subsequently gone on to become a full member of my service. However often this has only been after several years, so don’t expect results immediately. It is a long term thing.

If you are planning on doing a newsletter, it is best to deal with a specific area of work or client type (as mine is mainly for landlords). You can then concentrate on information and news which are important to your readers.   I find that the prospect of having to write monthly news items also makes me more aware and noticing of what is going on in my field. Which is beneficial for me as a specialist.

I think a general firm newsletter is less likely to succeed. People’s time is precious today and they will only want to read a newsletter if it is relevant to them. On the whole, people are not interested in your latest charity fundraising activities, the fact that you have three new secretaries, or your latest web-site makeover. What they are really interested in is “are there any new legal developments out there which will affect me or my business?”

If you are the person to inform them of a new legal development, and if at the same time you tell them about a new service you are offering to help them deal with it, they are more likely to come to you than another firm.

So the best way forward is to decide on which areas of law and practice your firm wishes to major in and provide a newsletter for that (although for larger firms there is no reason why you should not do two or even three specialist newsletters).

In Part 2,I will take a look at newsletter content.

Social Media - Whats the point? (Part 1)

Lawyers are often disdainful about social media, and don’t want to bother with it. “Whats the point” they say, “I’m not interested in knowing what people had for breakfast (twitter) or having connections with people or ‘friends’ I have never met (facebook, Linkedin, Ecademy etc). 

Well if you have a web-site there is a very good reason. Search engines. There is not much point in having a web-site if no-one ever sees it. And most people find web-sites nowadays via the search engines, mainly Google. 

For example, web-site statistics for my Landlord-Law site show that about three quarters of visitors found it via Google. However, to get Google to recognise your site and put it on the first page of that search report (most people only ever look at the first two or three pages at most) you need to have lots of good quality links going to your site. This is because Google will place more weight on a link from a popular site (such as the BBC site) than a link from a small web-site no-one ever sees. 

Social media links are good therefore because they are high ranking links and if the search engine spiders and bots find your site linked from there, it will get higher placements on Google searches. 

Question answered! But see also Part 2 (to be continued ...)