Legal Services Board transparency ruling good for everyone

An archaic barrier in professional legal services is about to be demolished by legislation. A ruling by the Legal Services Board could do little less than catapult the legal profession into the twenty-first century overnight. If it wasn’t for the fact that an innovative service already exists to do just that.

More imposing than the Berlin or Byker, and almost as long-lived as the Great one in China, the wall that obscures pricing policy for solicitors has long been a barrier to seeking legal representation. The issue has been in the public eye since 2016, when the Competition and Markets Authority reported on the suppressed demand for legal services, mainly due to obscure pricing.

It was that report, along with findings from the Law Society, that prompted our founding. Now, with LawBid chalking up over a thousand registered firms, and with the thousands of clients who’ve used LawBid to get on board with legal representation, it is looking more and more like we’ve been vindicated in bringing LawBid to the UK legal services market.

There are a diminishing few who maintain that online services are just comparison sites. We’ve been to visit a few of them in the prehistoric wing at the Natural History Museum. For the rest of us, LawBid has provided solicitors with an easy route to new business, and a platform to showcase their unique skills and expertise. LawBid is where increasingly tech-savvy clients can begin a relationship with their representatives, long before they take that hesitant step over the threshold. In short, what the LSB is recommending is exactly what LawBid has been providing for just over two years. It’s that innovative approach that has seen us scoop the coveted Excellence Award for Innovation in Technology at the Law Society Excellence Awards 2018 earlier this month in London.

There have been preposterous claims by some antiquated firms, that to avoid complying with the LSB they should close their websites. This reeks of the attitude the regulators and LawBid seek to address. Those views cannot survive commercially in the present day. They belong in a Dickensian world, of fearful clients, who cross the threshold of a legal firm as a last resort. As that CMA report concluded, encouragement, not dissuasion, is the only way to grow business for the future, and to take advantage of the latent demand for Britain’s legal services. LawBid represents the vanguard of that encouragement. Watch out dinosaurs, here comes the LawBid asteroid…