Partner Article

Why the law needs e-commerce

Paul Coulter, marketing director at www.brilliantlaw.com, on why online trading is vital to modern law firms

No matter the question, any small business owner will tell you that the answer is ‘how much will it cost?’ Unfortunately, when it comes to legal services, traditionally the answer is normally ‘you’ll find out when you get your bill’.

That lack of transparency is why SME owners often skipped legal services altogether even though that can prove costly in the long run.
And that’s why it’s long overdue that the legal industry started doing things differently.

The simplistic purchasing style of Amazon’s website was what we had in mind for our clients when we established Brilliant Law at the start of this year.

Why can’t legal services be like any other item that a consumer buys - easy to purchase, fixed price and customer-focused?
The Government’s Legal Services Act allowed the formation of alternative legal practices run by non-lawyers - and gave us the opportunity to shake up the industry.

Our main objective is to be the most recommended law firm in the market and we believe that by placing e-commerce at the heart of what we do, our business model is future proof.

Whether it is employment contracts, staff appraisal forms, director service agreements, cookie compliance, VAT and Companies House registration, shareholder agreements or any aspect of employment law, small business owners should be able to purchase a legal product that suits them.

Like so many other online transactions we all take for granted, when shopping for legal products, customers should have the ease of adding individual products they want to their shopping basket, the site then making suggestions for complementary products customers may wish to add (in the style of Amazon’s ‘customers who bought this also enjoyed…’).

The choice of what the customer can pick off the shelf on a legal e-commerce site will allow them to pick individual products as well as bundled packages that offer a complete service for different aspects of business.

Every business is different though and at Brilliant Law when the transaction proceeds to the checkout, this triggers a call from one of our solicitors to bespoke the package to the requirements of the customer’s business.

Businesses and start-ups with no idea where to begin can also get a telephone consultation with a solicitor to assess what legal products they require.

This is all as far away from the traditional solicitor’s service of billable hours as it’s possible to get. And that’s how we like it.There doesn’t have to be a mystique about legal services - our customers want to know what they are paying, to get immediate access to a solicitor and this lets them focus on what matters their business.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Brilliant Law .