Why is marketing fine except when done by CMCs?


Posted by Barbara Hamilton-Bruce, director of operations at Legal Futures Associate Accident Advice Helpline

I’ve been in ‘the industry’ for over 20 years, working as a personal injury (PI) lawyer before and after the Access to Justice Act.

In the early days I represented clients who were introduced by before-the-event (BTE) insurers where the firm would agree to accept X number of small claims in return for Y number of cost-bearing PI claims running the low-value claims as loss leaders. The firms I worked for subsequently became panel members of organisations such as Claims Direct and The Accident Group whilst maintaining the BTE arrangements. They were also running free clinics, Citizens Advice Bureau workshops and working with charity organisations.

All of this work predated changes in 2004 to the Law Society referral code ‘allowing’ the payment of referral fees for the introduction of business to law firms. One way or another those law firms I worked for were ‘paying’ for the acquisition of work long before the change to the code.

Introduction is a common part of business life – look to the payment of commission to intermediaries such as insurance brokers, car salesman or aggregator sites dealing with energy services. It’s part of a competitive marketplace. Those end providers such as insurers, car manufactures and energy companies sell their services direct to the public as well but they have chosen to spread their routes to market across as wide a plain as possible – it makes business sense and gives the consumer choice about how they purchase products and services.

I suppose there is a consumer argument that the prices could be cheaper if you approach the producer directly. This may or may not be true. The seller receives less income if an introducer is used because fees are shared or commission is paid. But the seller has to weigh up the fact that when it sells direct, it has to bring the consumer to the door through some form of advertising. Everywhere there is cost in ‘selling’ their product – introducer fees or own advertising costs.

So, why is it different for claims management companies who stand as marketeers, introducing business to law firms? Why is their behaviour, and I clearly mean behaviour within the rules and regulations, considered so abhorrent that the government should consider banning it?

Within a free market and with law firms governed by their own (extensive) regulation, why does the government feel the need to step in? If, dear reader, you say “because of the compensation culture”, I may very well weep. This ‘culture’ is a perception of a culture. Please tell me that in 2011 our MPs are not wasting their time and our money on legislating a perception? An injury sustained without the negligence of another is an accident. Just an accident. No matter what may be thought about the ‘have a go’ culture, its legitimacy or otherwise, this fact remains.

Law firms can operate in exactly the same way as the sellers mentioned above. Their ‘product’ is their legal services and their consumer the potential claimant. They can advertise themselves at a cost to the practice, they can link up with trade unions or representative bodies, they can decide to wait for customers to come to their door through reputation without any of these methods or they can decide to use an intermediary/introducer such as a claims management company.

In every single example, the law firm will have incurred cost, although in the zero action scenario the ‘cost’ may be the time spent creating the reputation.

The thing about PI claims is that the majority of claims are subject to a fixed costs structure; the personal injury lawyer cannot pass on the increased or variable cost of marketing to another party. They have to cover their marketing costs from the fixed income available to them. If they get their marketing wrong, there is no chance to raise fees to recoup the loss.

I anticipate the argument that the ‘referrers’ are concerned just about the money, and not the quality. Let me be honest – of course we need to be sure that our fees are paid; what functioning business doesn’t?

I could cover this point at length, but as a business making a recommendation of another business’s services, I have every interest in ensuring that we work with firms that provide a high level of service; our business has its own reputation to uphold. If we wish to maintain our position and not be defeated by complaints about the legal service our lawyers provide, we have to care about quality.

Detractors say that CMCs incite claims and that when somebody else is footing the bill, this is unacceptable behaviour; that it is wrong to profit through another person’s misfortune. But excuse me if I’m misguided, but since when has the entitlement to profit been linked with misfortune or otherwise? Undertakers profit from death, counsellors from misery and private healthcare providers from a mix of both.

I do not accept that helping legitimate claimants achieve access to legal services and the justice they are entitled to is wrong or that lawyers, as legitimate business people, should be prevented from utilising the benefits of ordinary commerce by letting a marketing company take the risk with an advertising budget.

Insurers are spending millions (rather, tens of millions) to drive business to their companies. I already know that the insurers don’t like the idea of restricting the free market; the Association of British Insurers’ (ABI) Nick Starling said as much at last month’s I Love Claims seminar. Well, that is until you talk about the free market as it applies to claimant lawyers. Then the ABI are 100% behind the curtailment of marketing activities. Not just the ‘obvious’ push for a ban on referral fees but the heavy push to reduce the fixed cost allowance to remove any profit (they like to call it fat) to prevent advertising, however lawyers may wish to do it.

With all the rhetoric about referral fees, it is worth remembering that the government is not a disinterested party (it is the defendant in many actions) and insurers have every interest in pushing down the number of claimants or staging an argument to try and bring down the value of fixed fees.

In the process of accepting the ban on referral fees as a done deal, we may be accepting the restriction of access for many consumers and the movement of business around the legal market. We may also be allowing insurers to stage a coup on the level of fixed fees for road traffic cases by looking at them in isolation.

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    Readers Comments

  • Interesting post. Thanks!

    I did some research on employment claims which looked at marketing approaches and compared the approaches of large/small firms and claimant/respondent firms. It can be found here:

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1306308

    Go to p.118 – its a short section if anyone is interested.

    In broad terms, the data suggests (up to a point) that there is a lot of hypocrisy talked about marketing. All lawyers do it: only claimant lawyers get ticked off for it. Sometimes there is good reason for this, sometimes there isn’t.

    Defendant lawyers have marketing strategies which they invest in, they’re less public than claimant firms, and there is much less debate about them (outside of the Bribery Act, I suppose). There is no public outcry, for instance, about defendants being encouraged to mount unreasonable defences and yet a) we see the kinds of tactics that big Corporates can get up to and b) in areas like PI, employment and libel/privacy they tend to lose by far the majority of cases.

  • Sarah Mumford says:

    I am not particularly interested in the politics of all this but am commenting as a private citizen (albeit my firm doesn’t have a dog in this fight as we don’t do claimant PI or pay referral fees).

    All I can say is that it is instructive to stop next time you are accosted in a shopping precinct by a guy in a clipboard asking if you have had an accident. I did recently and was appalled at the hard sell and his misdescription of the legal process. I didn’t let on that I was a lawyer and he rapidly changed his tune when I did.

    I have also had direct experience of a little used mobile being bombarded with texts and voicemails after a small accident where the ambulance was called and a family member went to casualty. The only way the mobile no could have come to the CMC’s attention was if it was passed on illegally, certainly it was passed on without consent.

    So in my direct experience as a citizen this is an area that needs reform even if that adds extra burdens on organisations who are compliant with the letter and the spirit of the law.

  • Yet another well written, considered and logical article on the subject. I do hope that the members of our government are proud of what they are doing to their electorate at the behest of the ABI.

    We haven’t heard much from defendant lawyers in this debate, bar token opposition, no doubt driven by their arm twisting paymasters, but then it would be akin to turkeys voting for Christmas if they backed the proposed changes wholeheartedly. It would also be fair to assume that they would be uncomfortable having their own financial arrangements subjected to the searchlight of scrutiny in the referral debate. After all is a handsome discount from hourly rates any different in effect to the transparent payment of a fee to obtain work?

    Regarding the unwelcome texts etc. it’s not reform that is required, as in so many areas of life, it’s the effective implementation of existing legislation. Sadly that requires real effort and doesn’t guarantee headlines as securely as the illusion of activity generated by nice, shiny, new laws.

  • I think Sarah Mumford above makes a good point. I have been saying for some time that the answer to the whole perception problem is simple and can be implemented in two steps:

    1. The MOJ actually enforces the existing rules and stops the cold approaches in shopping centres, stops the spam emails and texts (apparently I am entitled to £3,750 every week for an accident I have never had and from claims companies I have never provided my mobile number to as well as emails to various email addresses I do not use (again proving they are obtained and used without my consent against the rules)); and

    2. A new law bans insurance companies and legal expenses insurers from selling on the data of their injured victims so that the victim has the freedom of choice to make a claim in the first place (instead of being badgered by insurance companies to do so as now happens) and also the freedom to choose who helps them.

    Enforce the laws already in place to cope with point 1 above, bring in a law for part 2 and the whole mess is quickly cleaned up!

  • I would agree with all said above. There are elements of CMC’s which are abhorrent such as the texts and calls to say you are entitled to £xxxx for the RTA I never had, but to throw the baby out with the bath water and ban referral fees, is simply wrong.

    This ignores the fact that there is a marketing cost of some sorts to fund obtaining cases but yet alarmingly we are told once referral fees are banned, fixed fees for RTAs will come down! This is based on what? The Defendant Solicitors stating they are paid less per hour? The reason this may be the case is they get paid for all the work they do and are not subject to the same rigors of assessment that Claimant lawyers are.

    Too many people involved are making too many bad assumptions based on bad opinion leads to bad law.


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