Marketing & PR

A YouTube video of an angry man slicing household goods and a car in half in response to separating from his wife – which has been viewed more than six million times and been covered by media outlets across the world as he sought to sell his share on eBay – has been revealed as a stunt by lawyers.

Consumers are being misled by dubious practices in online reviews and endorsements, while more than half of buyers of services are swayed by them, according to an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority.

A solicitor has launched an app which he hopes will be the equivalent of taxi service Uber for legal and accountancy advice by allowing consumers to find, connect with and later review their advisers.

The young entrepreneur behind RateMyBarrister.com has expanded the site to include solicitors. William Rees, a barrister based in Cardiff, accepted that this would mean finding a new domain name.

A lawyer comparison website aimed at SMEs is poised to begin an “aggressive growth” campaign to win market share, after securing substantial investment 18 months after it launched.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned law firms against misleading publicity as the government’s ban on the use of inducements by personal injury solicitors came into force yesterday.

The Law Society has extended its consumer campaign promoting solicitors until the end of October this year, after an increase in traffic to the society’s ‘Find a Solicitor’ website of 18.5% in only four months.

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint against a west country personal injury law firm, saying that consumers now have “a general awareness that to have a valid claim there would have to be some degree of fault or negligence by a third party”.

The way law firms handle telephone enquiries from prospective clients is so bad that “it’s as if every managing partner in the land met up at a secret location and agreed the worst way possible to deal with them”, a leading consultant has claimed.

An American lawyer has successfully sued over an online review posted by a British man, winning £50,000 damages at the High Court. Timothy Bussey, a criminal law attorney based in Colorado, found himself the target of a review attached to his firm’s Google Maps profile.

Irwin Mitchell has become the latest major consumer law firm to launch a new advertising campaign aimed across a spread of its services, including a personal injury commercial that it said would “distance” the practice from other firms.

Eight of the ten most successful law firms at showcasing their expertise online and distributing it via social media fall outside of the UK’s top 50, even though as a whole there is a lot more that large firms can do to improve their standing on Twitter, new research has found.

The TV advertising battle between legal brands stepped up this week with Slater & Gordon launching a new campaign with the message ‘Your case is our cause’. Meanwhile, the share price of Quindell plc, part of which S&G is in talks to buy, continues to fluctuate.

Over-50s company Saga has launched the first television advertising campaign for its legal services division, satirising the notion of lawyers being long-winded. There adverts envisage what life would be like if everyone spoke like a lawyer

Veyo, the Law Society-backed business that will shortly bring its conveyancing portal to the market, says the high-profile advertising during last week’s Wales v England rugby match did its job in kick-starting its outreach to key players in the home-buying market.