I would far rather engage in a conversation, remember them – two way listening and learning stuff. A conversation about how our technology can supercharge your Practice. I will let you decide and make that choice.

Knowledge = Understanding = Evaluation = Informed Decision

Remember, doing nothing is also a choice.

One of his views about online legal was it may or may not happen and will be all that ugly commoditised stuff. Duh!

Technology is not about making little boxes but about making processes more efficient so the high value bits can be leveraged. You know things like advice, recommendation and the things that you can see that your clients can’t because you are experienced, (which is really why they come to you in the first place). Switched on law firms have that high value stuff in abundance.

You have done this efficiency thing before. Yes you have. Remember typewriters and carbon paper? Now ask yourself would you trade Word et al in for that? So if you are thinking about DirectLaw you should be focusing on one thing, efficiency. DirectLaw delivers that into your Practice big time

In this ‘new world’ everything is about satisfying the clients need and it is your job to match the solution to the need, be that face to face, over the phone or online or a combination of all three.

Whilst price matters for many it does not necessarilly rank that high for all, (within reason…you guys are in the reasoning business don’t forget).

Personally I would rather focus my time on those that appreciate my value than waste my time on those who only think about price. They may be fewer in number but I bet they’ll stick with me especially if I keep reminding them that I think they are valuable.

I had a Better call later with another firm which went like this,

“Why are you buying DirectLaw?

“To position my firm and to reduce cost. We are not expecting to make money initially but we want to have momentum when the rest of the market wakes up and we are a year ahead of them. A year ahead in how we use it internally, how we market it and how we communicate it. Then we expect to make money. I can do a lot of damage with a one year headstart ”

Wise words. They get it…do you?

Ps if this is littered with typos my apologies, I am on a train and there is nothing better to do.

Ultimately it is about looking at your need and matching the appropriate solution.

Maybe it could happen in the legal sector. You can view the legal freemium model concept here.

For now, here are my initial thoughts…always welcome input and insight from you. What do you think?

I would, as ever, welcome your comments and feedback to develop this debate.

Some law firms may take the view that they can display online fixed fees, dabble in a bit of SEO and then ‘Bob’s your uncle’ put your feet up, make a brew and wait for the business to roll in.

After all, isn’t that just what Amazon and the like do? Display a price, the customer sees it, likes it and buys it. That’s the way the world is so we, (i.e. a law firm), must fall in line as well.

But there is a big difference between online legal and Amazon. The thing is; customers understand the things they buy on Amazon, but do not necessarily have the same knowledge regarding legal solutions. Which some law firms may be surprised to learn is a good thing for them.

What is easily forgotten in this fast moving, ever developing, online world is that Amazon didn’t just appear overnight. It built up it’s presence over a long period of time. It refined and marketed itself over years. It invested heavily to build brand awareness and market share, constantly innovating and developing to create sustainable, profitable revenue streams…and it still does.

So why do law firms think that simply by being online means that it is ‘job done?’ Even SEO, despite what your web consultants may say, can take years of work to get you where you want to be and the most successful campaigns are those that are constantly changing and being refined.

My view is that you must optimise internally before you optimise externally. This is because by internally optimising your firm first you prepare yourself for the future and get the ‘double whammy’ of educating your market about how valuable you are.

So my feeling is that you shouldn’t “ape Amazon” just yet and display fixed prices on your key high value documents online unless you are prepared to build and invest heavily to create awareness AND have an ultra slick process that enables you to manage ALL fixed fee work to profit. Why do I say this?

Displaying fixed fees on your website can create an instant conflict for your fee earners. They have little or no room to manoeuvre on price because the fixed price has created a client expectation. As a result the fee earner becomes disinterested, (they dislike the conflict aggravation), reverts to traditional engagement and doesn’t push the  economic benefit/convenience of online to a firm/client that is driven by need. Their online engagement system withers because the processes involved are not internally optimised  so the law firm remains inefficient.

To be clear, I am not against fixed fees, far from it, but I would rather offer fixed fees in the context of and negotiated with each individual client. I make a big point of explaining this to prospects.

So what’s the solution? The solution is an online guide price. It’s a subtle difference but it gets the client hooked. Here’s how it could work.

Create a landing page, I will use a Will as an example. On that landing page the emphasis is on the client to make contact with you, let’s say by phone. This is the page your SEO should be focused on.

On that page you create a couple of scenarios for Wills and show a ‘guide price’ or a ‘typical price’ for these scenarios. By doing this you have covered off the pricing issue. The client has a price perception, not a final price.

The client could click a button, commence drafting, (via DirectLaw functionality) and submit through to the firm. The firm then has a look at what they sent, comes back with a price, agrees it with the client, securely uploads/sends any Rule 2 letter and final invoice before releasing the document either electronically or in office, (the latter process ensuring that mental capacity can be assessed).

That will work for some clients but most will want to call you, (in fact many will have called you without even seeing your website). Why?

Because when someone searches for a solicitor online or offline they are looking to discuss a solution to a problem rather than get a document. They probably want to talk to a human being.  It is your job to explain what service or document they need and provide a clear indication of how much it is going to cost them. It is you that is doing the solving in the efficiency landscape. And in this efficiency landscape you can broadcast value.

The client calls and discusses their issue. This puts you in a very powerful position because you can leverage your value. You are engaging one to one…and that is very important. You can,

• suggest that they come into the office and pay ‘x’ perhaps because of the complexity of their circumstances, or because they don’t like online etc

• suggest that they can commence online and submit the document to you either because they have more standard requirements or are maybe time/price sensitive. You can do this efficiently by registering them there and then, sending them access to the the electronic drafting tool and relevant document via email. In fact they will be good to go with the solution you, (and not your competitor), have suggested to them with in about 46 seconds. And you can track when they start by using your DirectLaw back office functionality.

The client has initially bought into the guide price and you can negotiate whatever price is most suitable within the context of their requirements and that is far easier to do, including handling of price objections etc. in a conversation.

The critical point, (which is why I keep re-emphasising it), is that by doing this you have engaged and you are in control, which means you can balance the price/value paradigm. The client knows what they are getting, (understands the value), for their money and respects the price. Because you are engaging you can also control future events such as next steps, appointments etc. In essence you have managed the price expectation via your web page and refined it via the conversation.

For me it makes no odds whether you do the deal in office or online. There is potentially more margin in doing it online, but circumstances and client need should decide that.

This also allows you to manage the ‘cheap & cheerful’ client who wants to pay £99 for a Will.

You can say “I can give you a basic Will for say £109, but you have to draft this online. I will give it a standard review, but if you want more detail I will charge you more.” You are controlling the conversation so can explain why you might want to charge more.

The  client agrees because you may say to them, based on the circumstances that they have outlined, that if they do a cheaper online-only service they do not enjoy the full benefit of your expertise. Again you are in control of the message.

So what you are doing is emphasising the value you provide, but can still offer a service to the price-sensitive clientbase. This will give you a good defensive position if/when major brands come into your space.

Most importantly, utilising the ‘guide’ price will make your internal optimisation (i.e fee earner buy-in) far easier to achieve and position you better for external optimisation as you build traffic through your site.

It gets worse. My first CD was the soundtrack to ‘The Mission’ an epic film whose soundtrack (I am seriously into movie soundtracks), has been relegated to elevators and teary motivation videos, which is a shame as it is an immense film about repentance and retribution.

Okay I am going to go the whole hog and reveal the first mp3 I ever played on my original iPod. Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated.’ I still think that is a great BBQ song but there you go.

Why am I telling you this? Well partly because I am a self deprecating individual but more importantly to emphasise that the music never changed, it kept coming, I kept exploring, I kept trying, I kept discovering.

Music never changed…just the way I consumed it. My lifestyle and needs changed.

I can still remember having two or three CD’s and thinking ‘this is probably a fad.’ On my right as I type is a wall of CD’s, about 800+ but I stopped buying CD’s 3 years ago. I gradually shifted to mp3 as it suited my need. Reasonable quality and accessible. My CD collection is dwarfed by my mp3 one.

So what is the law firm connection?

Many of us will still need estate planning, many of us will need LPA’s, start ups will need shareholder agreements and employment contracts etc. This is because life is full of risk and we need protection. We need to tap into wisdom and advice. So like music the law is not changing, just the way we will consume it.

Today you can still buy vinyl, still buy cassette, still buy CD’s and mp3′s. We consume what we want in the way that we want to. We are informed to make those choices. This is because we all like to choose in our solving journey.

In this rich socially orientated, always-on world we can review, share, search and solve quickly and intelligently.

So clients can still come in to your office or commence online or do both as they solve the problems they have with you in a way they want to. Your job is to ensure that they know that.

ps “chill out, what ya yelling for? Lay back it’s all been done before.”

Brands will career in and mop up, law firms will take external investment and things are going to be turned upside down. Well maybe.

Sometimes the really big changes are the ones that we don’t actually realise and we just accept and let them run parallel with our day to day stuff.

In April this year I went through my two year anniversary on Twitter. When I started I did not have a clue what it was but now it has connected me up and allowed me to refine my conversations, (my first tweet was about an issue regarding VPN on a Mac – geektastic!!) This is the always on, always refining, always solving culture.

One of the things I really like about the Internet, (and more so social media), is that the big can project themselves as small and the small can project themselves as big.

For me though the big change in the last 5+ years has been the availability of broadband. Remember those days of 56.6kbps (some of us even remember before then), the electronic handshake. I can remember using Demon, Navigator, newsgroups and email before it got the more compelling GUI-wraps that you see today. In those days Microsoft barely existed.

Broadband is not perfect but we will refine and develop it because the ‘providers’ of it know that a) we want it and b) it opens up infinite knowledge access = revenue opportunities

Because of broadband the highway has got wider, longer, faster and more far reaching. Applications and the solutions they deliver have got more clever and more affordable. These applications are built for the highway, not the country lanes. How much software do you buy today where you get a disk and you load it up and click install? Some major ones still do, operating systems for example, but there are a heck of a lot of apps that we download, plug in and go.

Change happened or more to the point evolved, we just didn’t realise it because as humans we talk about ‘big bangs’ which tend to never happen. As humans we obsess with prediciting and second guessing, sometimes for our own purposes sometimes to be seen as some kind of thought leader.

Someone once said to me that the iPhone didn’t feel like a phone. For me that is the point. Making calls is one, relatively minor, function. The iPhone or any smart phone has evolved into a data device.

This is why I think change in the legal sector is probably not going to be a ‘big bang’ but a gradual evolution as the accessibility of quality legal ‘stuff’ is brought to market. Accessibility will be a key stand or fall, almost gladiatorial issue for firms.

The cat is out of the bag now, firms are deploying the kit, and kitty ain’t going back in. (Apologies for my appalling metaphors)

Client facing web based technology for law firms is now ‘in play,’ it can’t go back, it can only go forwards and the winners will be those who see that.

Why is this happening? Have people just discovered the law? Have people just discovered the internet? Or do people have a need and their first instinct is to go to that most valuable piece of digital real estate..that box in the top right corner of any browser and start searching out solutions to their problems.

What is going on is exactly what is going on everywhere. More searching, more finding, more solving, more refining, more efficiency. This is the ‘click:solve’ culture that all of you reading this now accept as the relative norm.

Law firms may think it is enough just to have a standard brochure website. But this is a crowded market and even with precision SEO, the market will make it’s own mind up.  And making up of minds is now moving into the time space of seconds…”see it, like it, want it.” So making your site a compelling capture tool is going to be strategically critical.

Remember -  just because a consumer starts finding online does not mean they always have to be served online <- VERY SIGNIFICANT

Consumers (you and me) will decide on this “more…” culture. We will all decide what works and what doesn’t because we are all part of the platform. Whilst law firms will have less control, they will have some and the smart ones will have a lot. So it is important to get your product and position right.

And when consumers find what they like leave it to them to spread the word through a myriad of social tools based on how you helped them, how you solved their problem. Don’t go and hunt them down and get in their face.

Human beings don’t like to be hunted they prefer to discover.

You don’t need to focus so much on the social, you need to focus more on the solution, making sure it is accessible, transparent and relevant.

Leave the choice to the market, just make sure option is more compelling than your competitiors.

Yet another small step in the right direction. Are we seeing a shift from the ‘Tesco Law’ doom view to one where brands enter the market and create awareness? I think we could be.

More information, more relevance, more education leads to increased awareness. The next move should be to start to create the efficiency landscape where that awareness can go park and solve.

This is a landscape that you as a law firm and/or lawyer have a right to stake your claim but you also have to make sure that you can survive in it. Do not assume that just because you are there now that this means you will be there later.

This means thinking about how that landscape will grow and develop. The landscape will be unforgiving and unsentimental.

In the efficient landscape the buyer will make available choices and match their need to the appropriate solution.

My thinking stems from David Cushman’s piece last year about the 21st century organisation which I advise you read. David’s point is

The role of the 21st century organisation will be to become a platform. A platform to enable people to find each other, talk together, act together and change the world together, niche by niche…and if you aren’t in the business of starting fires, then pretty soon you aren’t going to be a 21st century organisation.

The ‘platform’ should not, in my view, be seen as solely online. Your physical office is part of the platform. You and your colleagues are part of the platform.Your clients/customers are part of the platform. The latter are very powerful if you can get them to peer-to-peer market for you with the info-ray AKA social media, (yep that’s right social media exists for them to ‘work it’ for you not for you to ‘work it’ at them).

For me a solely online offering for many industries, and here I am interested in law firms, is as restrictive as one that offers face to face only. People, (clients and solicitors), come together as required and that could be online, telephone or face to face or a combination of up to all three.

Best option is to offer a combination of all to suit the need of the client and the solicitor. Efficient/convenient for both parties. It will be up to the individuals, client/solicitor, to determine where this engagement starts, is conducted and is concluded and each of those stages could be at different parts of the platform.

We all are aware of the theories of the Professors Susskind and Mayson about how technology will be delivered into this sector to increase efficiency and that law firms need to start to think more about the distribution chain than they perhaps have been up to now.

Quite right too but how can that actually, as in day to day reality, be done?

Online delivers an array of opportunity from the aggregation of firms via panels such as Quality Solicitors, search sites, which I think we will see more of, and the deployment of technology like DirectLaw that effectively takes the strain and plugs into the buying styles or patterns of the market.

The shaping of the legal services market is going to speed up, lots of entrants will come in, some good, some not so good. The landscape will change as we all contribute and shape it. We will all, in our way, contribute to its efficiency.

I have talked before about integration specifically around your website. Over the next year or two law firm websites will start to come into their own because of such integration and functionality.

Today law firms are starting to create their own efficiency landscape.

For a law firm this presents huge opportunity because if you invest some time in planning you can start to create an efficient landscape for your target market. Don’t forget, targeted markets love an efficient landscape.

The smart firms are waking up to this potential first and grabbing market share before the “me-too’s” arrive. They are investing their time well.

This will be valuable time spent internally optimising (forming/norming) then externally optimising (performing) because when we are talking about that word ‘online’, if properly deployed, it has the ability to grow a business exponentially. The news for late starters is that they may gain momentum but they may find it tougher to catch up with the early adopters.

Some in the legal profession are dismissive of online engagement. All the boxes that they put an ‘x’ in I can probably put a tick in…but that is a separate discussion. My big point is that it is surely wise to go where your market goes. Talk the language that your market talks. Then let the tech take the strain and deliver those clients to you in a way that you want.

As ever, I would welcome and value your thoughts.

Visitors to your site today will access information. With drafting integration they can access information + solution. Subtle but BIG SHIFT and (possible) game changer.

So why does this matter? Well it,

1. means that you maintain control of your marketing message (informing, engaging, capturing), tweaking and refining it to suit which,
2. means that you can create richer and powerful landing pages to utilise for SEO which,
3. means you can create the efficiency landscape for your Practice that drives the relevant client to the relevant solution, (face to face, phone, online or a combo of all three),and
4. it is affordable for firms of any size.

So you can capture, solve and migrate to in-office as required from your website. Clients can choose to complete and securely submit a rich initial draft to your desktop – think about the time/cost saving of them doing it and not you.

That, say one hour, initial sit down and draft with the client time has just dropped off your cost base for those clients who like that way of engaging with you, (ie people who transact on the web and unless you have been on a desert island with no 3G or broadband there are quite a lot of them).

You then have the job of refining it via online or face to face. This is where you start to motor…here is where you are adding VALUE. THIS IS YOUR KEY DIFFERENTIATOR. And that’s value delivered more efficiently.

The bottom line is that at all times you as a law firm remain in control of the process and the document.

So I think law firms have a choice,

• do nothing, wait to see what happens and adapt/survive (reduced destiny control) or
• deploy engaging, relevant participation tools and start to create a market for your services with the reach and accessibility of online to enhance existing methods of engagement (increased destiny control).

I say go deploy and create your market.