Firm launches stand-alone consumer legal expenses insurance scheme

LawStore, the legal services brand set up by Bromley-based MTA Solicitors, has launched what is believed to be one of the first stand-alone legal expenses insurance schemes for consumers.

For £45 a year scheme members will have one hour of legal consultation with a solicitor per month, a ten per cent discount on other legal services – whether charged on an hourly rate basis or fixed fee – and an annual health check.

For an additional £55 - or £100 altogether - per annum clients will be able to add four family members who will individually have access to the same services.

LawStore Legal Advance will be charged at £4.95 a month for clients opting to pay monthly, or £9.95 for the family membership.

LawStore is owned by solicitor Michael Taylor and David Green, respectively senior partner and chief executive officer at MTA Solicitors.

The new scheme is one of a number of developments kick-starting the roll out the LawStore brand across the country, with plans to recruit ten firms to its panel by the end of the year.

In July the firm announced it would shortly open stores in Cambridge and London in the next six months.

Already Kent law firm Judge & Priestly and London-based litigation practice Taylor Hampton have signed up to the LawStore panel.

LawStore sees itself as an alternative to QualitySolicitors, both in what it is offering members of the public and for firms members of its panel.

MTA opened the first – and presently only – LawStore shop in The Glades shopping centre in Bromley, Kent, last year, around the corner from their main office.

Green said the company managing The Glades initially declined to offer LawStore floor space when he approached them a few years ago.

At the time, he said, the management company would only invite retailers but the recession must have been a factor in making it change its mind when MTA got in touch again last year.

While LawStore is the Glades’ tenant the premises are officially occupied by MTA which set it up as a branch office, to comply with SRA requirements.

The shop first served as an outpost where clients would make appointments to see a solicitor at MTA’s main offices, which occupy four floors in a separate building just 50 yards away.

Now the shop has two solicitors, who are able to see clients and “unlike the QualitySolicitors executives in WHSmith’s shops” can provide legal advice on the spot, said Green.

Green told Solicitors Journal that press coverage had resulted in a number of enquiries from firms interested in joining.