You should have gone to Lex-savers

As we get older our extremities start to fail. It is a fact of life and there is no denying it. When my eyesight started to get a little fuzzier than normal and The Times rather more difficult to read I knew that I had to make an appointment to see the optician. Normally, I would go to one of the high street well-known opticians. Nevertheless a friend suggested I go to Asda which, they explained, did a stonking good test, had extremely cheap frames and I would save a fortune.

Being a cash-strapped legal aid lawyer, the chance of a bargain seemed too good to miss. So off I went to the local Asda. I was impressed by their modern facilities, helpful and caring staff and astonishing all-singing and all-dancing eye test. Loads of technology, mysterious machines and more computer screens than a James Bond movie set.

When I came to pay, the assistant in the store rather quaintly asked if I would be paying with cash or vouchers and I asked what vouchers she was referring to. Apparently if you are on Income Support or fall into other categories, the government gives you vouchers to assist with the cost of spectacles and the eye test.

So will Asda have a similar operation in years to come devoted to giving legal advice? How would such a scheme work? Would they want to dip their toe into advising the man in the street who is facing a messy divorce or possession proceedings?

M&A at M&S?

The key to all of this is that Asda, Tesco, Lex-savers, or whoever, will have realised that giving legal advice in supermarkets is something they would only be doing to private clients. Companies are not going to rush out to their local Sainsbury's to organise a merger or an acquisition. Indeed the work is probably going to be low scale, such as wills and possibly quickie divorces and I doubt whether the major supermarkets would be too interested in advising the shoplifters who have been pilfering from their shelves.

It is also worthwhile considering the model provided by the optical tests. I went in, I was tested (for approximately 30 minutes), I then went back, had the spectacles fitted, paid for them and the whole operation took considerably less than one hour. No correspondence or contact made on the telephone, and while I indeed saved approximately 30 per cent on what I would have paid the high street practitioner, what was happening was very far distant from the private client experience in a firm of solicitors.

Firstly, the due diligence done was much more arbitrary. Nobody was asking me for copies of passports, utility bills, etc. Secondly, I doubt whether a supermarket would be interested in a client ringing up five or six times a day to check on the progress of their case, which can be the experience of the legal aid lawyer. Nor indeed would a supermarket be interested in a customer coming back every day because they are worried about what is going on in relation to their divorce, contact dispute or possession proceedings.

The optician's model was devised around speed, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Legal services require something very much different. Clients treat their lawyer as a confidant, counsellor, and professional. It is important for clients to talk to their lawyer.

In my time in practice I have never failed to recognise the importance of seeing a client in the office as that is the best way to diagnose their problem, resolve their difficulties and send them away happy.

Unfortunately, in a great many problems that clients experience there is a need to see the client on more than one occasion. It is important that a senior solicitor sees the client on the first occasion so that accurate instructions are taken and a proper diagnosis of the problem is made. While it is possible to delegate at a later stage, problems that can have catastrophic consequences cannot always be best delegated to junior fee earners.

Need help with packing, miss?

When somebody is at risk of losing their home and becoming homeless is it right that a very inexperienced paralegal should be dealing with their case? Equally, when your children are about to be taken away by social services and placed for adoption so that you will never see them again, is that an appropriate case for a newly qualified solicitor who may have only limited experience of such cases?

These are very muddy waters. I would be very surprised if Tesco, Asda, or Sainsbury's even began to want to get involved in such matters. While they may see the value of setting up shop and preparing simple wills and doing straightforward divorces I just do not see them getting involved in the more complicated work which we all have to do on a daily basis. The model is so very different to what Asda were achieving in their in-store opticians.

Nevertheless, we cannot be blind to challenges and we cannot ignore competition. There are lessons to be learned about efficiency from the Asda opticians. One thing I noticed was how little paperwork was involved. That is in stark contradiction to the reams of paper that legal aid throws up. Maybe the Legal Services Commission should have a look at how Asda operates?

The only negative feature of the Asda experience is that dogs are banned. Certainly word is getting out that mine is a dog-friendly office and a great many clients say what a comfort it is to have the office humanised by the presence of a dog and are pleased they can bring their own dog in (if they have one), which gives them company and, in some cases, moral support.