How will legal services be “delivered” in future years? We start here a two-part series (to be continued in the next issue) looking at the delivery methods used by some of the key online providers and find out how they are planning to develop their services. We start with an article by Jamie Ross of Lawpack, which offer a large range of do-it-yourself books, kits, form packs and software from their site; they also provide these for the Tesco Legal Store. We then hear from Mark Keenan of Divorce-online, a provider of online services and DIY packs relating to divorce. We also hear from Martin Davies of LAW on the WEB which provides packs and documents for sale but concentrates mainly on gathering potential clients for its panel members.

In the next issue, we will provide an article from Richard Cohen of Epoq, originator of the document generating package Rapidocs. Epoq is currently setting up a network of major firms who will use the Rapidocs software to provide online document drafting facilities on their own sites. We will also hear from Giles Dixon of ContractStore which sells low cost online contract templates to small and medium sized businesses.

Lawpack

By Jamie Ross

Lawpack Publishing was established in 1994 as the offshoot of a US publisher that was selling a series of self-help kits in the US. Lawpack has since become independent of its US parents and has diversified, producing books and forms not only in the law but also in law-related areas such as tax, property and business, all of which we sell off- and on-line.

The original subjects covered remain the bestsellers today: wills, tenancy, power of attorney, divorce and employment. The message behind the products is that it can be more cost-effective to draw up your own documents – a simple will, say, or a standard tenancy yourself – than go to a solicitor.

Deciding on new titles and arriving at the decision to commission authors means identifying market trends (preferably in advance), spotting gaps in other publishers’ lists and monitoring law changes for new opportunities. For legal titles, we recruit solicitors and barristers, trying to find lawyers who can convey their knowledge of the law and its processes to a broad-based, novice audience.

Contrary to what might be expected, we have never encountered antipathy towards the self-help message from the lawyers we have approached as potential authors. Because lawyers believe in their subject, they like the challenge of writing about it for a new consumer audience. There is also a genuine wish to spread a message about a legal issue, to dispel a myth (such as “common-law marriage”) and correct dangerous public (and media-perpetuated) misunderstandings. Individuals and firms also see the marketing opportunity of books with their names on the cover.

Our authors and approvers monitor titles for us on a quarterly basis, drawing our attention to forthcoming law changes. Legal publishing presents both the opportunity to capitalise on changes by marketing new editions and the flipside challenge of careful stock maintenance, running-down and reissuing in line with a known schedule of events. There is the very occasional headache (and cost) of product recall, when a last-minute, unforeseen change to a court document is announced by HM Courts Services, sometimes with only a matter of a few weeks’ notice. The headache is reduced to a mere itch when we can make the changes to the content we publish online.

The Lawpack website is becoming a comprehensive resource site where visitors can download documents and ”˜eKits’ and access third-party services. There is a clear need for legal services when someone’s requirements go beyond what a self-help kit or book can provide. Our titles are peppered with advice concerning their scope and limitations, underscored by the need for readers to take legal advice if they are in any doubt about its suitability. The natural commercial extension of this is to be able introduce those legal and other services to our readers. This advice can complement the content, for example solicitors checking a will prepared using our Last Will & Testament Kit, or can take a subject further after the book or kit has acted as a basic primer. Wills account for a sizeable slice of our business and in this area we are developing different services on our site. These include partnerships with providers of online wills, solicitor’s will-writing services and will checking services for those who write their own wills using our kits. We could envisage working with high street solicitors through a central online hub, who might want to access our 560,000-strong nationwide customer base.

We are always pleased to receive proposals from solicitors and other service providers. New online partnerships in our core areas are being developed: in property, Home Information Packs, services for landlords (such as eviction) and conveyancing; services for businesses (online incorporation, insurance) and will-related services such a funeral planning. For those who want to speak to a solicitor in person, we provide a one-to-one general legal helpline, run by a third party and paid for on a one-off charge basis.

As legal self-help has become more mainstream, and with an eye to future deregulation of legal services, we have developed partnerships with other websites wishing to offer Lawpack products and services. These include msn.co.uk (the UK version of Microsoft’s portal), Tesco.com, Express Newspapers and Loot; each has ”˜legal store’-type pages that closely mirror the content of our own site. These add considerably to the number of unique visitors to lawpack.co.uk, which itself receives 750,000 a year.

Within strict design guidelines and in consultation with their web editors, we maintain ”˜white label’ sites for these partners on a shared revenue basis; updated content from lawpack.co.uk is automatically rolled out from our content management system.

The opening up of legal services presents new opportunities for us and our business partners. We see the changes as a potential threat to high street solicitors as they currently position themselves, but as an opportunity for the legal profession. The two main factors determining consumers’ buying habits when it comes to legal services are price and accessibility. Get those right and, with future advertising and money spent on promoting alternative legal services, the result will be more people seeking lawyers and legal advice, wherever and however the service is delivered.

Jamie Ross is commissioning editor of Lawpack.

Email Jamie.ross@lawpack.co.uk.

Divorce-Online

By Mark Keenan

Divorce-Online was set up as a home based business in 1999 while I was working as a family law executive in a high street firm in Swindon dealing with mainly legal aid matters and uncontested divorces. It seemed that the web could be a good way to deliver a service to people who wanted to do their own divorces and with a bit of HTML learnt from a book, the first (very basic) website was set up.

Within 6 months I had secured investment from a business angel and moved to Abingdon where the new website and services were rebuilt from scratch with a view to assisting clients deal with their own divorces using our skill base.

We decided that a downloadable pack would be the best – and simplest – idea. We used a wizard based system called the LegalPac which is downloaded by the user and populates documents for them which are then edited or engrossed by our team of case workers who all belong to the Institute of Paralegals.

In 2008 this is being replaced by a web-based service which will incorporate a sophisticated case management system for our use and a GUI for the client to make the process even more straightforward.

We offer two services, DIY or Managed, the managed being essentially a filing and chasing service while the clients remain litigants in person. We use our local county court for this and have developed a good working relationship with both the staff and the judiciary which allows us to process the work very efficiently.

We also deal with financial orders by consent and these are outsourced to Solicitors who draft them for us on a set fee per case. These are then sent to the client to file or in the case of the managed service they are dealt with electronically as our court allows us to electronically file the order and receive approval by e-mail from the court.

We now have seven staff including myself working for the company plus three subcontractors, which include Solicitors, Filex, Paralegals, Sales staff, Administration and IT.

The website receives over 50,000 visitors a month. Most are looking for information and we therefore earn additional revenues from referring them to telephone advice providers or to solicitors through our Family Law Directory which costs £150.00 per annum to join.

I think traditional high street practices have their place and the majority of people needing legal services will prefer to see someone on a face to face basis, but where the service can be commoditised like wills, conveyancing or uncontested divorce, the internet is becoming a lot more popular because of broadband.

Our business leaped by 50 per cent in 2007 and is continuing on that trend into 2008, probably due to the very heavy press exposure we received in 2007 with our TV advertising and internet campaign which was extremely successful. We will be looking to become an ABS in due course so we can offer a wider range of services to the family law market perhaps by starting a new virtual practice with our own solicitors.

Mark Keenan is Legal Director of Divorce-Online.

Email mark.keenan@divorce-online.co.uk.

LAW on the WEB

By Martin Davies

LAW on the WEB has now been online for more than 9 years and attracts over 60,000 readers every month. This makes it one of the most viewed legal sites in the UK.

It all started in my home office back in 1999. A former practising solicitor I was working as a Director of Marketing for a large firm in Hampshire and I wanted to take control of the firm’s website, rather than paying someone else to do it for the firm. This meant learning how to use Microsoft Frontpage, and creating my own website was the easiest way to do it – and so LAW on the WEB was born.

By early 2000 LAW on the WEB was proving popular with the search engines and with readers and so I decided to give it my full attention. I have been working on it full-time ever since. The concept was to provide the general public with a website that provided useful, straightforward and easy to understand information on legal topics that they were likely to come across in their daily lives – conveyancing, family matters, employment issues and wills and probate. The site could answer some of the basic questions and readers were invited to raise any other queries they had through email for some general guidance.

The problem now was how to make some money out of the fact that we had a reasonable number of readers, most of whom were looking to find the answer to some existing legal problem they had. Until the late 90s the internet had been all about free information. It was only when the likes of Amazon saw the potential of online shopping that internet users became more comfortable with parting with their cash for internet products and services, but then came the bursting of the unrealistic dot com bubble. Many under-funded and over-hyped websites went to the wall. They had been about building market share, as LAW on the WEB was, but they had done it through massive investment, which was just not sustainable as the revenue was not there. This was not a mature market. It would take several years for internet users to become comfortable with buying online – hard as that may be to believe given that around £45 billion was spent over the internet in the UK in 2007.

Having survived the bursting of dot com bubble, it became imperative to make our money not through the readers but through the solicitors to whom we could pass leads and enquiries. A secondary site caniclaim.com was set up to tap into the lucrative personal injury and medical negligence market. Solicitors were prepared to pay reasonable fees for decent leads in these areas, as indeed they still are.

We survived on the personal injury revenue for some time, with solicitors able to see a direct return for their cash. We did not charge for individual cases, but required panel solicitors to pay an annual fee, with cases being allocated to the panel solicitors on a geographical basis. This was a simpler model for both us and the panel solicitors, involving no follow-up or monitoring. Provided we could supply each panel solicitor with sufficient claims then everyone was happy.

With a growing readership and a greater acceptance of online purchases, we decided to move into the sale of documents online. Our first venture was with a guide to motoring matters in the magistrates’ courts for readers who were going into court without any legal representation. The guide was informative and cheap and was downloadable online after payment had been made through the BT click&buy system; about 5,000 have now been sold.

This niche also gave us the opportunity to build up a Motoring Law Panel of solicitors. We invited motoring law solicitors to join the panel, initially at no cost. They were featured on the site and so benefited from direct client contact as well as referrals from ourselves of clients who wanted personal advice and/or representation in court. Once we had a decent sized panel we worked with them to create a fixed fee menu of services to take away some of the uncertainty over legal costs and then also moved into providing telephone advice for a one-off, up-front payment – the majority of which was paid to the panel solicitors. Both worked well and we were able to start charging the panel solicitors an annual fee which is now set at a reasonable level – both for them and for us.

Based around this model we have now established other specialist panels – family, employment and wills – which we are developing and which are now paying their way. We keep the panels deliberately small and they now grow organically as we are approached rather than tout for new firms to come on.

We have also expanded our document production to include some simple legal documents – change of name deeds and severing joint tenancy documents for example. Enduring power or attorney forms sold very well, particularly as the deadline for their extinction loomed – we sold over £3,000 worth in the last month of their life. There certainly seems to be an appetite for DIY legal documents and services and I can see this being an important part of any law firm’s income in the future. They also have the advantage of being able to sell the add-on services for those who cannot cope with doing it themselves or find that they get out of their depth as matters progress. If solicitors do not offer these services then there will be others who will.

We have a huge and very loyal readership and we turn over a reasonable sum of money with very low overheads. With the introduction of the so-called era of Tesco Law we think our sites would make a great bolt-on for any forward-looking firm of solicitors. The sites are currently up for sale.

Martin Davies owns and manages lawontheweb.co.uk and caniclaim.co.uk.

Email martin@lawontheweb.co.uk.