Adrian Jones at Tikit talks about the changes taking place in how consumers select legal service providers

The recent Legal Services Consumer Panel report (carried out by YouGov) has found some dramatic shifts between 2011 and 2019 in how consumers go about choosing legal services. Most notably, younger people are much more likely (39%) to shop around than older consumers (25%).

What factors are they taking into account when shopping around, and what can law firms do to prepare for this increasingly customercentric legal services market?

LAW FIRM LAG

When talking about changes in how people choose law firms, Adrian Jones, product and development director at Tikit, makes a comparison with more general consumer patterns of buying behaviour. He notes how, because of the plethora of information available on the internet, people are becoming more intelligent in their buying habits. “A decade ago, if you wanted to retain a solicitor, or renew your car insurance, you reached for the Yellow Pages, picked an advert, and called them during office hours,” he says. He notes, in particular, that people would generally speak with just one or two possible providers.

The advent of the digital world changed this long-standing pattern of behaviour. “Now, we can get multiple comparative quotes for many services, such as car insurance, extremely quickly – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. There is also a great deal of transparency in both the service and the price,” says Jones.

He compares this current state of affairs with that in legal services, which he thinks is not as advanced. “You rarely find a law firm open on a Saturday afternoon,” he notes. “But you can buy house insurance at that time of the day, or a new-build house throughout the weekend. The law will inevitably have to evolve and catch up.”

This article was first published in the October 2019 issue of LPM ‘Process apping’ click to read the full article