Over the past week we've discovered that the brave new world promised by the breaking of the monopoly on legal services is not so brave or new after all, with firms offering traditional services but just with new brochures.
On October 6th 2011, the Legal Services Act enabled non-lawyers to own law firms. This change promised innovative new offerings from modern firms and it is widely expected that residential conveyancing would be the first service to experience this change.
However, it appears that rather than innovation, its more a lack of imagination that has come to the fore, with several new offerings merely re-packaging existing services under a new name.
In the first instance, a major agency chain is promising a new fast conveyancing service as part of their selling process. The brochures are covered with pictures of happy smiling house buyers, delighted with their 24 hour access to case information and friendly solicitors getting their deals done in days. The disappointing reality merely just another name for a tired old legal panel, paying local solicitors a fraction of the fee to carry out the work. Nothing new beyond the name here (and of course the disatisfaction from the same lawyers).
Another firm is offering an interesting model with low costs and high introductory fees to agents. Again, promising 24 hour access to dedicated staff; this time it's just another name for a high-volume conveyancing factory, known to have high fall-through rates and slow turnaround times.
Its extremely disappointing to see this lack of commitment at first hand - it seems that innovation has yet to come to the legal services market and what we see are merely false starts on the road to innovation.
Here's an idea for companies looking to offer legal services. Instead of pimping out non-lawyers and offering generic support email addresses as a communication substitute why not take the plunge and actually employ staff and invest in systems to provide the service directly.
Or is that a step too far in this brave new world?
