Marketing & PR

Simplify the Law – a law firm franchise concept which launched last year – has reinvented itself as an online legal service that aims to help commercial lawyers repel new competition in the market, Legal Futures can report.

InjuryLawyers4u, arguably the UK’s leading solicitors’ marketing consortium, is opening up its panel for the first time in more than eight years. There are currently 43 firms on the panel, collectively spending millions on advertising the service.

The company that says it was the first in the UK to provide free online legal advice for both businesses and consumers is to launch its first law firm panel for referrals – although it will not charge for them.

The importance of law firms marketing to their existing client base has come through strongly from major new Law Society research that shows repeat clients are by far solicitors’ biggest source of work.

Three-quarters of business law firms say that an online presence has been their single most effective tactic to generate new leads in the past year. The poll of 209 business-to-business law firms around the world found they are increasingly investing in their online activity.

It will be for personal injury solicitors to convince the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) that they are not paying referral fees once the ban comes into force, it emerged today as the SRA published its long-awaited consultation on how it will implement the ban.

A Southampton law firm that has set up a business club for entrepreneurs last night won the Law Society award for excellence in innovation. The society’s annual Excellence Awards also saw recognition for QualitySolicitors.

QualitySolicitors this week launches its public attack on ‘faceless’ legal advice provided by new entrants to the legal market and national law firms, with a series of posters across 1,000 billboard and poster sites.

Law firms will have to adopt a more forceful marketing model if they are to survive in the post-alternative business structure (ABS) marketplace, a specialist in growing online businesses has urged.

Some of the country’s biggest legal brands are going head to head on our screens this month after Irwin Mitchell launched its first-ever television advertising campaign, Russell Jones & Walker unveiled a new approach to promoting its Claims Direct brand and QualitySolicitors (QS) started its second round of adverts.

Legal comparison website Wigster.com has unveiled plans to increase its 100-strong law firm panel five-fold as it seeks to step up its presence in the market. Matthew Briggs, former CEO of Minster Law and Capita Insurance Services, has joined as a director to drive growth.

QualitySolicitors has today unveiled an exclusive partnership with online legal services provider LegalZoom – the most recognised legal brand in the US – ahead of an advertising campaign that will by openly hostile to supermarkets, banks and others offering legal services.

Shopping centre legal brand Lawyers2you added London, Leeds and Manchester to its growing list of locations this week as it plans also to target some of the capital’s most popular markets and in time introduce video conferencing as well.

Global publishing giant Thomson Reuters has launched a London-based pilot of its US Super Lawyers attorney-rating service covering solicitors, the first foreign venture of its kind after more than 20 years in operation.

A new ‘find a solicitor’ website that prioritises lawyers with good feedback from their clients is set to go live in October. MrLawyer.co.uk claims it will “help to change the way the legal industry currently operates”.