Brien: I wanted to change the industry
An online service specialising in uncontested divorces has become an alternative business structure (ABS) regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
James Brien, managing director of Easy Online Divorce (EOD), said regulation was a way of showing the firm had specialist knowledge and also of attracting legally qualified staff.
But regulation did not mean the firm would expand from helping divorcing couples who had come to an agreement to dealing with contested divorces.
Mr Brien, who set up the business in 2020 in the wake of his own divorce, said EOD had taken part in the recent Competition & Markets Authority investigation into the unregulated divorce sector.
“There are operators in the online divorce sector who behave in an unscrupulous way. Until we were regulated, it was very easy for regulated firms to say ‘what do they know about divorce’?
“From the start I wanted to change the industry and for people to know there is an alternative to their local high street solicitor.”
Mr Brien said EOD worked only with divorcing couples “comfortable with their agreement”, whether it was negotiated by a mediator or a solicitor, or agreed themselves, and not those couples “in a contested situation”.
The firm, based in Newquay, Cornwall, has seven staff – six paralegals and a sales adviser. Barbara Mathias-Polgase, a solicitor with her own family law firm in Penzance, is the part-time legal director of EOD, having helped the company “almost from the beginning”.
She is also head of legal practice at EOD, which was granted its ABS licence earlier this month.
Mr Brien, head of finance and administration, said one of the main tasks of solicitors was to draft fixed-fee consent orders, and he was recruiting at the moment for another solicitor.
The third director of EOD is Anastasija Brien, his wife, the customer experience director.
Fees range from £299 for a simple no-fault divorce, to £399 for the simplest type of consent order to £899 for a high-net-worth consent order. Court fees are not included.
Mr Brien previously worked on the international development of retail brands. Having spent “hundreds of thousands of pounds” on lawyers in that role, when it came to his divorce Mr Brien said he was keen “not to create conflicts” and “get through it as easily as I can”.
He then wrote two books in 2019 – The Real Man’s Guide to Divorce and The Mindful Divorce: How to Heal and Be Happy After Separation.
He said both men and women contacted him for advice as a result and, “for the first time in my life, I was helping end users”.
Meanwhile, lockdown had stopped his retail career, with its international travel, “overnight”. He moved from London to Cornwall and founded EOD as an “information business”, based on customers completing documents online and getting advice to help them deal with the courts.
Expecting most demand for the cheapest “DIY divorce service”, he found that instead the main demand was for “fully managed services”, where EOD took responsibility for checking documents and submitting them to court.
Mr Brien said he had self-funded the business until now, despite having friends in the world of private equity.
He said external finance would mean “losing an element of control” and he did not want “someone telling me to put my prices up”. Nor did he want EOD to expand into other types of work.
Nevertheless, he wanted the firm to grow and train lawyers and expected that, by this time next year, EOD would have increased staff numbers by 40-50%.
“My focus is on making ourselves a really attractive place to work.”
