Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
November/December 2004, by Delia Venables

The Tesco Legal Store
by Alan Chance, Lawpack Publishing

The Tesco Legal Store (www.tescolegalstore.com) was launched in June 2004 as a development of Tesco.com, the extraordinarily successful supermarket website which now accounts for more online grocery sales than all of its UK rivals put together.

Lawpack Publishing was commissioned by Tesco to build and run the site (www.lawpack.co.uk). With more than ten years experience in the self-help legal market, we at Lawpack knew how popular our titles could be, if offered to Tesco customers in the right way. For their part, Tesco were very interested in making simple legal solutions more accessible to their customers.

There are four elements to the site:

1. Offline products including books, kits, forms and software. This is the backbone of Lawpack's existing business. We are best known for our DIY Will kits, which sell in several major high street stores, but we have many other titles covering residential letting, small claims, business issues and family law.

2. Online products. This is something of an innovation for us. Tesco customers can also download legal forms and draft letters for instant use.

3. Free information. We wanted to make the site more than a simple online shop. We have a huge resource of information available in our legal books and kits, some of which we decided to offer free. We wanted to make the site a worthwhile destination in itself, as an information source for customers.

4. Referrals to solicitors. Our products give people information so that they are in a better position to decide what they should do next. Often that next step is to seek professional advice, so the site shows customers how to find a solicitor in their local area.

Our aim is to provide genuinely useful information and simple, practical products, without straying into the field of professional legal advice, which is outside our scope.

This is obviously not 'Tesco Law', a phrase first used in the national press and picked up by the Lord Chancellor to describe the Government's desire to bring the law into the High Street by allowing solicitors and accountants to band together and practice under the auspices of banks, building societies and retailers. Our website is something entirely different. It is an attempt to make the law more accessible but it stops well short of any formal arrangement between a supermarket and the legal profession.

The Launch

We could find no precedent for a supermarket offering legal information either in this country or in the USA, so we had no idea how it would be received here. We were very encouraged by supportive comments made by the Lord Chancellor, and also by the Law Society, who issued a Press Release to coincide with the launch.

The launch was widely covered on television, radio and in the national press, and the story was even picked up in Europe and the USA. There was some serious discussion of the pros and cons of making the law more accessible, but the great majority of the press coverage concentrated solely on our Divorce Kit, which is actually just one of more than 150 products on the site.

The Ray Parlour divorce was in the news at the same time. News items and features on Tesco's approach to divorce appeared everywhere from the Daily Mail to the Financial Times, and from BBC Newsnight to Vanessa Feltz's radio phone-in. In fact our Divorce Kit is one of the less ambitious of our products, giving a general introduction to the subject and encouraging people to seek professional help if there is the slightest complication in their affairs. It traditionally accounts for a small proportion of Lawpack's overall sales, but with so much press coverage it has proved to be one of the most popular titles in the Tesco Legal Store.

What are we trying to do?

A common misconception is that we are trying to undercut the legal profession by offering cheap legal advice. As far as possible, we steer clear of the word 'advice' on the site because this is not our business. We are publishers, not lawyers, even though most of our products are written by barristers and solicitors. By offering a service at arms length through the internet we obviously cannot claim any knowledge of individual circumstances. It is quite clear to us, and we try to make it equally clear to our customers, that we cannot give them professional advice.

Our site aims to give people basic information about their legal rights and responsibilities. Where they can handle simple issues themselves, we hope to give them the confidence to do so. Where they cannot, we can at least introduce them to the subject and direct them to the right source of advice, which may save them time and money when, for example, they visit their solicitor.

Of course, the site cannot hope to provide comprehensive coverage of every legal issue and is not above criticism. Neil Howlett, in the September/October issue of this newsletter, made various points, including: 'The site does encourage consumers to seek legal advice but exactly at what stage they should do so is unclear'.

In fact this is what we say on the site (and there are similar instructions in many of our books and kits):

'You should certainly consult a lawyer in any of these cases:

1. You have a serious or urgent legal issue. Some problems can become serious if they are not tackled in good time.
2. You are not confident that you can solve the problem yourself.
3. You prefer to talk to a professional. Sometimes it's easier to share a problem.
4. A large sum of money or an important contract is at stake.
5. A legal issue is not straightforward and the solution is not clear to you.

If in doubt, always seek help.'

We believe that this is clear, and indeed we can see from our traffic records that a large number of our customers are using the site to link through to the Law Society's database, or to its equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The 'Find a Lawyer' facility is one of our most popular features.

Again, Mr Howlett says, in relation to our Divorce and Separation Kit: 'There is so much good information available for free on the web that it is hard to see that it is worth paying for'. Point taken, and the same could be said about virtually any information-based subject where a search on Google links you to thousands of relevant pages. With adequate time, research skill and the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff, we can learn more or less anything from the internet. It does not follow that there is no merit in a printed guide written by a qualified expert giving an easy-to-read overview of a particular subject, complete with practical information and links to further sources of advice. This is what we aim to do with the Legal Store, and £9.99 can hardly be considered too high a price.

Now that the site is launched, we will concentrate on expanding and improving it, with new titles as they become available, and with regular updates. The feedback we have had so far suggests that there is a real need for this basic legal guidance and I am sure that this site is a worthwhile addition to Tesco's range.

But Mr Howlett makes many good points and we will take them all on board. Starting a new website is hard work and there's still plenty to do!

Alan Chance is a Director of Lawpack Publishing Ltd, www.lawpack.co.uk.
Email alan.chance@lawpack.co.uk.

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