Practice heads agree that publishing prices will not change the market dynamics and more weight should be given to service quality.

Pitsford Consulting, the niche legal services consulting firm, has today published new research from heads of conveyancing on the implications of the proposed requirement by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that law firms should be more transparent on their legal costs and service quality.

Interviewing a wide variety of firms across England and Wales, there was consensus that there was limited or no merit in publishing legal costs on their websites for comparison. Some 80% of those surveyed do not publish prices online, as pricing is determined by clients’ individual needs.

However, three quarters thought that independently sourced client reviews provided the best determinant for client choice. However, it was clear that there was some way to go in providing this, with only half publishing client comments, reviews or testimonials on websites in an often inconsistent manner.

In other key findings:
  • The majority of firms will have to make some or significant changes to their websites and marketing presentation
  • Publishing prices will do little to halt the perceived slide to the bottom on price
  • Firms are not convinced that publishing prices will generate incremental leads for them
  • They are generating leads through word of mouth recommendation and online search marketing without the need to refer to price.
  • Displaying prices will only work if they are done in a consistent fashion for true comparison, but many felt that you cannot automatically compare price with service level.
 Richard Hinton, Managing Director, Pitsford Consulting, said:

“There are real reservations around the negative impact of publishing prices and any solution that is going to work for conveyancers is going to have to put a lot of effort into contextualising the pricing message using performance data – both operational and client driven.”

“It seems to clear to me that a consistent and standardised form of client feedback, such as that from Trustpilot, combined with meaningful and easy to understand performance data on the firm’s standards should be an effective basis for comparison – and from our research, one that conveyancers would be willing to embrace.”

Kindly shared by Conveyancing Analytics