Marketing & PR

A website that connects the public directly with barristers is the latest legal business to seek crowdfunding after it launched a bid to raise £150,000 in expansion capital. The site, myBarrister, wants to sign up 1,000 barristers by the end of the year.

A law firm which offers personal injury claimants a £2,000 up-front payment has been told to make it clear to potential clients that the offer is subject to significant qualifications, after a complaint about one of its television adverts was upheld.

The Law Society has launched an £80,000 project that aims to make it a “more member-focused organisation”, Legal Futures can reveal. Chancery Lane has hired a former head of communication campaigns at insurance giant Aviva to spearhead the work.

Marketing collective First4Lawyers – which last autumn launched a £10m personal injury advertising campaign – is to open up its panel for the first time as it looks to increase its market share.

High-profile personal injury law firm Hampson Hughes has defied widespread concern about the use of inducements to attract clients by upping the amount it offers from £1,500 to £2,000.

What would you call a person who knows a couple of thousand local people and businesses that would make great clients for your firm and who are not? You probably call them ‘my accountant’, or maybe the chamber of commerce, or the local estate agents, the secondary school. All of these will have contacts with hundreds or thousands of people who could be clients for your firm and who are not – and they are local. People want advice delivered locally. Most firms could quadruple the size of their businesses, without having to gain new clients more than 30 minutes travel time from their offices. This is how.

The next stage of QualitySolicitors’ latest advertising campaign to persuade the public to love lawyers went live yesterday with a series of television adverts. Meanwhile, Slater & Gordon launched the latest part of its TV campaign with an advert focused on employment law.

Leading claims management company First4lawyers yesterday launched a £10m year-long marketing campaign with a new television commercial featuring tennis player-turned-commentator Andrew Castle.

Law firms are suffering from a “nationwide epidemic of missed opportunities” because of the way they deal with telephone enquiries, new mystery shopping research has claimed. In 97% of calls, the handler failed to ask if the caller wanted to go ahead or make an appointment.

Liverpool law firm Camps has launched a new consumer brand – Your Legal Friend – as part of its “multi-channel” response to the personal injury market. It said the launch follows research to ensure the brand reflects both what the company stands for and delivers what its customers most value.

Slater & Gordon yesterday launched its first UK television advertising campaign as it bids to become “a household name”. Costing more than £1m in the launch phase, the firm used M&C Saatchi to create a series of adverts, starting with one on personal injury.

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected complaints that positive online reviews for a law firm were fake and that the website hosting them would not accept negative reviews. This was the first complaint of its kind involving a law firm.

An online legal directory aiming to aggregate the publicly available data about lawyers – including complaints information from the Legal Ombudsman – has launched with the outline details of nearly 13,000 lawyers.

An internet marketing specialist has launched a new map directory for public access barristers. Nick Draycott, director of GoDirect2Barristers.com, has adapted online mapping technology to produce a site which he argues offers improved direct access to the Bar.

A network of 200 law firms which started life as an internet service provider for lawyers has re-launched as the latest referral website for legal services. Lawyers Online went ‘live’ last Friday, and has immediately set itself up in direct competition with existing marketing collectives.