This is a draft assessment on the current state of online legal advice in the UK. Comments are really welcome in relation to sites that should be considered; judgements that should be made or altered; or anything else.
Overall, the level and presentation of legal advice online in the UK appears very much in its infancy:
- little use is being made of the computer to change the presentation of advice (and, therefore, there is little impact of the medium on the message). Most advice on the internet is in the form of what might be described as no more than ‘digital leaflets’. there is very little evidence of a commercial marketing approach that combines automated free advice as a shop window for paid for services (suggesting that government funding is needed for a site even in a field such as divorce where there are high numbers of both poor and rich consumers). A notable exception arises in the field of road traffic representation;
- there is similarly little evidence of any move to online dispute resolution to supplement online advice (but some suggestion of what could be done);
- the Dutch Rechtwijzer site looks much better than anything here with its ‘decision trees’, interactivity, carefully crafted papers carrying a small number of words, and its orientation to taking those who consult it through a dynamic process biased towards conciliation but allowing for choice;
In addition, it is pretty clear that the clarity of commercial sites like the Co-op will make it very hard for smaller and less well resourced providers to compete on either presentation or price.
UK-orientated sites that exist at the moment can be divided as follows:
- Email based advice for sale
There are a number of straightforward sites that sell legal advice by email such as Justanswer.uk. This invites you to email a question; offer a price as a ‘refundable good faith deposit’ (this actually the price that you agree to pay if satisfied); get an answer; rate it; authorise payment for the advice and, hopefully, join a subscription plan. The site claims to run ‘secret shoppers’ to test its experts and to use a ‘third party service’ to check at least one of the claimed credentials of each expert using the site. Experts get between 25 and 50 per cent of the sum paid by customers. The legal site is part of a wider programme in more than 100 categories and including doctors, lawyers, mechanics and vets. Brain-picker.com is a very similar site. Indeed, this says that it is run by a Duncan Lanser but if you click on his name on the website for more details you actually get the biography of Andy Kurzig, ‘JustAnswer Founder and CEO’ which suggests a link (and a mistake). Rightsolicitor.co.uk is a solicitor-based version of the same idea . This is a subscription site with a free 14 day introductory offer. Solicitors pay a monthly subscription fee for referrals. The online advice provision is run by LegalCare, which is a subscription legal advice service. It has a whole programme of LegalCare ‘associates’ who make money from selling subscriptions and are wooed by a youtube video clip based around a plausible young man somewhat inexplicably drinking a pot of tea in Patisserie Valerie, an upmarket coffee house.
Law on the Web is a similar sort of site, the content of which got panned by Giles Parker in an article in the Guardian. This site is now owned by DAS UK, the legal expenses insurer, whose insurance packages it promotes. It also offers a wide range of free documents, such as ‘living wills’ which you can download for free.
LegalZoom is one of two US companies seeking to open in the UK. It announced a tie up with Quality Solicitors set to start in November 2012 but this appears yet to start. The other firm is Rocket Lawyer, sued in the US by LegalZoom, over its allegedly misleading advertising of ‘free’ services. LegalZoom itself has been accused by a former employee of exactly the same behaviour and has been engaged in somewhat acrimonious exchanges on the topic. Rocket Lawyer allowed me to draft a free will but is still in a ‘beta’ version’ with relatively little content under its ‘family’ heading.
2. ‘Taster’ sites promoting paid for services
Here, Co-op Legal Services sets the paradigm. It gives a certain amount of information away for free – for example, there is a ‘breaking up checklist’ but is basically designed to lead you to a series of fixed fee packages – of which there appear to be around 90. The Co-op site trades heaving on the co-operative brand and is very well designed and colourful. It contains a lot of pictures and feels fresh and approachable.
The Saga site is similar: it incorporates a legal section among holidays, insurance and other topics. This takes you to Saga Legal Solutions which promotes a legal insurance plan and various other packages for such matters as probate, wills and conveyancing.
3. Document assembly packages
Document assembly is a sensible use of online potential. Rocketlawyer uses document assembly to give you a taster on a small range of documents such as wills and powers of attorney. The technology underlies other bulk providers – both direct to customers and provided for other businesses. For example, Epoq offers document assembly packages to be integrated within clients’ existing websites. This allows, for example, wills to be produced through Epoq processes but branded as those of the client. Epoch has its own lawyers in the Midlands who can remotely deal with clients and help them through the process of document assembly.
4. ‘App’ orientated sites
The knock-out best UK site that I could find was roadtrafficrepresentation.com for two reasons. First, this worked on the basis that you can segment the market between those who will take your free offerings and those who will take your free content but also be encouraged to move on to paid for services. Secondly, it takes you through a ‘decision tree’ inviting you to input information about yourself and, for example, any offence with which you have been charged. This distinguishes its approach from the ‘old way’ where you had an appointment to see a solicitor face to face and the ‘our way’ which distinguishes itself thus:
Much of this involves a process that can be streamlined and automated, which is what we offer. You are asked a series of questions and your answers produce an automated free diagnostic advice on possible outcomes and penalties if convicted. It replicates the process that a solicitor would ordinarily go through with you, but in much less time and without cost to you, all at a time of day or night that suits you. Our ‘virtual office’ never closes!
5. Not for profit advice sites
There are two main not for profit fairly comprehensive legal advice websites: advicenow run by the Advice Services Alliance and adviceguide run by Citizens Advice. In addition, there are a number of specialist legal advice websites, such as that run on housing by Shelter. These are very similar. They are all well designed descriptive, rather than interactive sites. The above sites are funded by the Ministry of Justice.
I assumed two particular cases to test the sites for the purpose of this description (a comparison of the performance of these sites and some overseas comparable sites is elsewhere). These were:
(i) a father who wanted to know how much maintenance payments would be after a divorce for two children;
(ii) what to do after an road accident (I was particularly looking for practical advice about making a statement and getting witnesses); and
In relation to the maintenance problem, the two major sites gave descriptive material (all accurate, well presented and, I thought, too long) and then took me to cmoptions.org. This provided what I was particularly looking for: a child maintenance calculator. Advicenow did not disclose that cmoptions.org is actually a site run by a government department. Nor is cmoptions itself particularly forthcoming about this: the information is given six paragraphs down the page on ‘about us’. There is nothing wrong with the site: but, in principle, disclosure of its authorship would seem desirable. To be fair, Advicenow referred the reader to a range of other sources, including independent agencies like Resolution and the Ministry of Justice. Adviceguide gave a full explanation of how child maintenance is calculated (I have to say I was lost after two paragraphs) and again a reference to child maintenance options (cmoptions.org) without indicating that it was a government site.
In relation to the traffic accident, adviceguide says:
Witnesses should write down their evidence and keep their original notes, as it may be some time before any claims are settled or court proceedings are heard. Whatever witnesses may say, the people involved in the accident should make their own written accounts of what happened, including making sketches and taking photographs as soon as possible and keeping their original notes.
This is the correct advice but it comes at the bottom of the ninth headed paragraph. My criticism of this is that the information is provided too much from the adviser’s perspective and not the client’s. For example, up at the top of the item is a section entitled ‘What must a driver involved in a traffic accident do’. This is limited to the legal obligations in such a situation: not the practical ones. Advicenow simply takes the enquirer back to the Adviceguide website.
6. on-line dispute resolution (ODR)
This is a topic worthy of fuller consideration on its own. The most interesting application in the legal advice field comes in the form of the divorce and parenting plans devised for the Dutch Rechtwijzer site.
There are a number of sites offering ODR over a wide field (and with varying definitions of what ODR is) for relatively small, commercial disputes with a value of less than £15,000.The site, e-mediator.co.uk, offers ‘consensus, commercial mediation’ with named negotiators, many of whom are practising lawyers. It operates on the basis of a variable fixed fee for a package that includes preparation, one day of the mediator’s time, travel costs. This appears to be a fairly tradition mediation service with an on-line front end during which the parties communicate by email prior to the mediation.
A second set of Online provides specifically advertise their ability to use teleconferencing. Helplink is an Ireland-based service which provides a variety of services online including counselling and mediation. This has fixed fee rates, quoted on its website, for personal and on-line sessions. The Mediation Room is a UK alternative (tagline – ‘we’ll see you out of court’) has an accessible website that explains now it can provide an online mediation which makes use of the possibilities of private communication with the parties and then anonymous suggestions of solutions to encourage the parties to resolution. The Mediation Room is run by Graham Ross, a retired solicitor and trained mediator, who was once a founder of the online legal information service, Lawtel. The big daddy of the online resolution market is Modria, a spin off from the online resolution procedures set up by e-bay and penpal and of which Graham Ross is the Vice President Europe. This is US based and clearly operated as the model for The Mediation Room (its equivalent is the Resolution Center). It presumably is designed to cover matters covered by US law.
