Burnetts Solicitors is one of the largest law firms in Northern England with offices in Carlisle, Penrith, West Cumbria and Newcastle and a nationally recognised legal expertise. The Legal 500 2013 describes us as “excellent on all fronts” and our strapline is “It’s not just business, it’s personal”.

Why e-commerce?

In June 2013 we launched our own e-commerce site to sell legal documents online – Burnett’s Market Place.

The firm has always been keen to make use of the website to streamline processes and make advice more accessible (eg the redundancy calculator), so the development of the e-commerce was a natural progression, but it was driven by a collection of inter-related factors:

• the firm’s corporate aim is to be the number one law firm in Cumbria;
• client research showed that whilst the firm was a market-leader amongst the largest firms in the region, our share of the small and micro business sectors was small; and
• one of our employment law solicitors (Aaron Lyons) had already developed a pack of documents for small businesses.

In order to achieve the firm’s corporate aim, it was therefore essential to develop our presence in the micro business sector – to do so the firm needed to develop a product for those smallest businesses which could be delivered profitably whilst still providing the level of specialist expertise which was integral to the Burnetts’ brand. The Market Place was a means to cost-effectively develop a new market and took around 18 months to complete.

Planning the project

The e-commerce team consisted of the marketing team, along with Partner Vaughan Jones who advised on terms and conditions and internet law, Managing Partner Tom Leach who advised on regulatory and financial issues and Aaron Lyons and Sam Lyon who provided our first batch of products. From time to time we also consulted the firm’s Head Cashier, IT Manager and members of the secretarial team. Andrew Armitage and his team at or digital agency Armitage Online delivered the technical aspects of the e-commerce site.

Most of our research was carried out online, looking at who was in the market, their pricing and how competitors’ e-commerce functions worked. Our conclusion was that the majority of the competition was from outside of the profession: very few solicitors’ firms had an online offering. We also saw that often the final checkout process was fudged, moving the sale back off-line into the hands of office-hours people processing.

There have also been mixed views of the opportunities arising from selling legal documents online. In July 2012, Alex Heshmaty wrote in this Newsletter that the future of legal services was in enabling “access to the best possible information” so that clients could “manage their own legal affairs”. Weeks earlier in Legal Futures there had been a brutal warning that the online documents market “is not a place for the faint-hearted”.

Two key points we took from the research were that the process had to be slick. Clients were likely to be experienced buyers of digital products like music, books and software and that if our purchasing processes were unprofessional, buyers would quickly lose interest and Burnetts’ image might be damaged. The other aspect of the research which influenced us was the lack of regulated providers in the market. We saw this reasonably unusual position as a benefit, giving, we hoped, potential buyers confidence in our products. When it came to implementation, however, working within the regulatory framework was a massive headache.

Our payment gateway

We chose Paypal Payments Pro as our gateway, admittedly with very little research, but because we felt Paypal was a payment mechanism that buyers would trust. The integration of Paypal into the website was problematic: it was important for us to run comprehensive testing, but functionality in the sandbox (test area) was very limited. To add to our difficulties, Paypal made significant changes to the sandbox in the middle of our development which caused additional problems.

One of the other reasons for choosing a third party payment gateway was the high risks involved with processing card payments via our own site. Paypal Payments Pro did include an option to process payments remotely, thereby avoiding the need for us to become Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant, but the documentation was nothing less than obscure. In the end we moved to Paypal Express where we could be sure that the liability for processing transactions was totally away from us.

Integrating Paypal with our accounts systems has been even more difficult – it has taken a year to get it properly working and the process delayed the launch of the e-commerce site by six months. The main problem was the difference between client account and office account. Although we tried to set up the direct debit to pay our monthly fees through the office account, Paypal continually tried to take money from our client account. When that was refused, Paypal effectively shut down our Paypal account and we had to start over again (four times).

It was extremely frustrating. Eventually this was resolved by removing details of the client account from their system. When we draw down client payments, we temporarily add the client account details and then remove them again once the transaction has been completed. At the moment we’re looking into alternative gateway solutions and would welcome any suggestions.

Platform

In terms of platforms to host the Market Place itself, we use Expression Engine, a modular content management system developed by EllisLab.

When our website was rebranded back in 2011, we chose Expression Engine, partly because it included good bolt-ons such as trolley and checkout integration. Having launched we have also found the discount code, discount pack pricing and order manager features useful. Having some familiarity with the Expression Engine interface through editing our website also helped us to quickly get to grips with our e-commerce facility.

Regulatory issues

Managing regulatory issues was a feature of team meetings, especially anti-money laundering. Accepting that scope for identity checks is limited in online sales, the firm’s overall AML procedure was changed to ensure that where a client’s first instruction had been via the Market Place, full identity checks must be carried out for any subsequent instructions. Other issues which we addressed were whether or not our professional indemnity insurance covered online sales (yes it does) and ensuring that order acknowledgments or other communications complied with SRA requirement. Although we didn’t involve the SRA directly in the development of the site, there was considerable consultation of the SRA handbook to ensure compliance.

Referring back to the fact that most of our “competition” is unregulated, we make a big feature of our professional status in our marketing. For example, right at the top of the Market Place section of our web site we say:

“Using Burnetts’ legal documents brings genuine peace of mind to business owners: all the documents have been drafted by solicitors employed by Burnetts, who are covered by our professional indemnity insurance and the firm itself is regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.”

Our products

Preparing documents for online sale was time-consuming. The editable documents themselves are Word documents, produced using Word’s editable fields which ensure only certain parts of a document can be changed. Once the editable fields had been inserted, documents had to be tested and re-tested, ensuring there were meaningful instructions in the fields so that clients could self-complete and that the finished document would make sense. We also had to ensure that there was consistent formatting in all our online documents.

We currently have six products online including website compliance documents, a social media policy and the small employer’s pack. They range in price from £35+VAT to £125+VAT. We were surprised to see that sales of our website compliance products have been marginally better than our employment products.

Our online documents have been produced by two different solicitors working in their specialised fields. We hope to expand the range in the near future. We would expect that any additional documents would again be written by a lawyer expert in their field, ensuring that clients receive the best quality document we can provide. Inevitably, that will mean training additional lawyers on how the use of editable fields needs to be taken into account in their drafting.

The Market Place has now been online for just over three months. Initial sales following an email marketing campaign were very promising. There has been a less positive response to our Google AdWords campaigns, but we hope to improve their performance as we become more knowledgeable. In the near future we plan to develop partnerships with membership organisations for joint-marketing opportunities – our new product development will probably be informed by our affiliates’ needs.

E-commerce is not a channel which can be left to chug along under its own steam and it’s certainly not a silver bullet for ailing practices. Whilst the cost of developing e-commerce is not a huge barrier (our site cost under £3,000), it needs marketing support to drive and deliver sales.

Angela Huck is Business Development Manager at Burnetts.

Email ash@burnetts.co.uk.