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Unless you are a lawyer, or some strange legal hanger on, the news that the Legal Services Board (LSB) has formally asked the government to regulate will writing has probably passed you by. Most normal people do not think about regulation (although I confess I have no evidence for this assertion) and if they do, they probably assume it is already there. They aren’t likely to waste valuable minutes reading about it when the future queen of England has been snapped in only her bikini.
Read more...I know I’m a bit late. I know you already have some, most of which you’ve probably forgotten or are at least ignoring. I know the start of the new year seems an awfully long time ago. But it is still January (just) and because my last post was about complaints, I thought it would only be fair to give you a chance to avoid them. Most should be glaringly obvious, but you’d be surprised.
Read more...We Brits like to complain. We are renowned for moaning about the weather (with good cause), unreliable trains (ditto) and bad service in restaurants (quite often ditto). Mostly, however, the complaining comes to naught because it is done in private to our family and friends and nowhere near the people who might be able to do something about it.
Read more...People are not always entirely rational. Of course we’re not. We have a right brain as well as a left brain, or at least most of us do, and for some of us the emotional part seems to dominate quite a lot of the time. Nonetheless, sometimes our actions appear to make little sense whichever part of the brain is in charge.
Read more...‘Trust’ and ‘lawyer’ are not words you would automatically put together, but the incomprehensibility of legal language may leave you no choice. Worryingly, while you would expect consumers to trust lawyers a lot less than they do nurses, doctors or teachers they also trust lawyers less than they used to.
Read more...I seem to have a habit of working for organisations that then very inconveniently change their name after I've left. First it was The New Opportunities Fund (although to be fair no-one knew who they were even when I worked there), then the Consumers Association (now it’s all Which?) and now it's law firm Russell Jones & Walker (RJW to their friends).
Read more...There is nothing like a discussion about consumer complaints to get lawyers’ heckles rising. Argue there is no such thing as an unjustified complaint and you get short shrift. Remind them it was the Law Society’s diabolical complaints’ handling that kicked off legal reform in the first place and you get a glowering look. Mention the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) and you’ll get thrown out of the room.
Read more...I was amused to read that at least one legal entrepreneur thinks
lawyers are ‘in denial about what customers hate about law firms’. With probably only one exception Ajaz Ahmed, the founder of Freeserve and co-founder of the award-winning Legal365, said last week that ‘there has been a complete and utter lack of any innovation, disruption or new business models’ in the legal profession.
As you can imagine,
calls for non-clients to have the right to complain about lawyers have gone down like a ton of bricks in some quarters. Apparently it will open the door to a flood of vexatious complaints from people unhappy they lost their case or who think their opponent’s lawyer was a bit rude or unpleasant. Worse still, it is being proposed by ‘quangocrats’ who have ‘no idea of the reality of legal practice’.
Lawyers, it has to be said, aren’t known to be the most tech savvy of professions. I say this as someone who likes to pretend they know what I am doing but as soon as someone starts talking about Ethernets, malware or RAM my eyes glaze over and I start to think about what to cook for dinner.
Read more...Consumers, it seems, still don’t trust lawyers. In fact, depressingly, while consumer satisfaction with the value for money of legal services has risen over the past year,
trust in the profession has actually fallen. The 47% it started at wasn’t exactly remarkable, but it’s now only 43%. That may be more than for some professions, notably journalists, politicians and bankers, but it’s way behind doctors (80%) and teachers (68%).
Thanks to the typical English bank holiday weather over the weekend I barely ventured out of the house and instead found myself working. Sad but inevitable. It’s also a bit sad that as a ‘consumer champion’ it was only in May 2012 that I came across a report on consumer attitudes towards the purchase of legal services published by the
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in February 2011.
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