Bringing new thinking to the high street

“We don’t need the Legal Services Act”, Rocket Lawyer’s UK head told me last week as he disclosed the business’s imminent launch in Britain. Others have made this remark before. Usually it has been in the context of alternative business structures and how private equity would be lowering standards as they woe your clients away from the high street and into their corporate waiting rooms.

But Mark Edwards doesn’t want your clients - or not in the way you think. He wants to bring you new ones. At least that is the premise in the proposition behind his business model. And because the Google-backed legal services platform doesn’t technically provide legal advice, it need not be concerned about setting up as an ABS. Instead, it brings together several channels through which legal advice can be provided. Its off-the-shelf online forms and precedents are products rather than advice, much like the ready-made wills clients can already get from the Post Office. And if users need legal advice, they will be put through to one of the firms on the Rocket Lawyer ‘On Call’ panel.

There are no referral fees involved either. The business is a subscription service, with users paying an annual fee to Rocket Lawyer. If ‘subscribers’ later decide they would like to take legal advice, they will be offered access to a panel lawyer directly. Panel membership will be limited to about 30 firms which have demonstrated they are taking a forward-thinking approach to client care and the delivery of legal services. They must also agree to discounting their fees by 33 per cent, as well as give the first half hour of advice and scope the work free of charge. Unlike QualitySolicitors firms will otherwise continue to operate as independent businesses under their own name.

So, what’s not to like? For the select few to join the panel, not very much, it seems. The impact of the new model on the sector as a whole is less predictable. Edwards believes there is latent market for legal services worth billions of pounds - that’s the market that traditional firms have been unable to tap into and that he will help open for panel firms. But even non-panel firms should take comfort in the arrival of his new service. In the same way that the Co-op should help keep law on the high street - albeit not in law firms - Rocket Lawyer will be a further prompt for law firms to start thinking differently about client service. If anything, it should help transform legal services from a distress purchase to an almost every day one.