Fewer High Street Firms Selling Legal Services Online
by Delia Venables
Many of the firms who started selling legal services directly on the web two or
three years ago are no longer doing so. This does not mean that firms are
abandoning the web as part of their overall strategy (other stories in this issue
cover developments in online case tracking offered to clients and deal rooms,
and marketing online continues to be a developing field) but the original type
of selling activity, which was a simple sale of documents or packaged advice
from a website, seems to have fallen back sharply.
The first type of online sales activity was the “mail merge” approach, in which the client fills in a form online and the firm then uses traditional word processing techniques to produce the final document and return it to the client. Some of the firms who offered this service originally are still doing so, including Kaye Tesler (who pioneered the method), Blake Lapthorn, Brethertons, Bullock Worthington & Jackson and Sherringtons but others, including Kippax Beaumont Lewis, Mellor & Jackson, and Sharpe Pritchard, have withdrawn the service. With the exception of Kaye Tesler & Co. - London, even the firms still carrying out the activity are not displaying the services prominently on their site.
Even more dramatic, however, is the almost total disappearance of the next type of selling documents online, which followed on from the "mailmerge" type just described, and which appeared at one time to have achieved an unstoppable momentum. This was the method of selling online documents online pioneered by Desktop Lawyer. The method used a document generation program called Rapidocs and users wanting a document for, say, a will or a divorce, downloaded the Rapidocs software and the template for the particular document (after payment of the requisite fee) and were then able to generate the document themselves, on their own computer.
Desktop Lawyer not only sold documents in this way itself (which is still does) but also enabled participating firms to do the same thing in a manner which appeared to the purchasers as if it were their own service. Desktop Lawyer withdrew this service from participating firms about 2 years ago and the dozen or more firms who used it at that time do not appear to have replaced the withdrawn service by any new equivalent.
Other firms still selling documents or packages of advice, either on a one-off
basis or on a subscription basis, include
In most cases, the documents are not generated in final form automatically but need to be adapted or "filled in" by the user in some way. The solicitor generally provides a set of instructions or explanatory notes with the document to enable the client to understand the options and personalise the document for his or her own use.
Other methods of selling legal services online include
However, these firms have not been joined by many others offering “virtual services “over the last couple of years and a few, including Tarlo Lyons, Putsmans and Scottish firm Boyds, as well as the previously "Desktop Lawyer" firms mentioned above, have withdrawn the services offered originally.
Whilst the comments above refer to firms of solicitors, a similar shakeout has taken place in the companies providing such services; many have ceased to exist at all and others are still there but seemingly are not doing a great deal of business.
My own view is that people are using the web to find answers to legal questions (where possible) but are not really wanting to replace the solicitor with a completely impersonal online service.
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