Consumer satisfaction with lawyers reaches new high

Consumer satisfaction with lawyers reaches new high – according to research published in August 2018 conducted by the Legal Services Consumer Panel.

This is the eighth year that this research has been carried out and is was based on a survey of 1,828 adults plus a sample of 3,535 people who have used legal services in the last three years.

It concluded that that consumers are happier with the service they receive from lawyers than at any other time this decade.

Lawyers provide regulated legal services and they can be solicitors, barristers, legal executives or licensed conveyancers.

The level of satisfaction with the service from lawyers was 84%, giving particularly good feedback for professionalism, clarity of terms and quality of advice.

This is particularly relevant given that the survey found that 73% of respondents now paid for their legal services privately – up from 56% in 2012 and that only 2% accessed legal aid which is down from 5% a year ago.

Over 88% of consumers were satisfied with the outcome of their matter and the figure for satisfaction was higher for areas like will-writing, powers of attorney and probate which are the areas of law we can help you with.

The areas where confidence was lower was in contentious areas including employment disputes, housing and landlord/tenant problems. We don’t deal with these areas of law At Hannays Solicitors and Advocates.

When it came to how consumers chose legal services the number shopping around stayed steady at 27%, up from 22% in 2012.

The majority of consumers who do shop around usually compare three or fewer providers, with younger consumers more likely to shop around when compared to older consumers.

Prices on websites

Only 6% of consumers found the prices published on lawyer’s websites – but this is set to change for Solicitors by the end of 2018.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority  will introduce new rules insisting on publication of prices on a range of services including conveyancing and will-writing. We will be publishing pricing advice for our services on our website soon.

We don’t believe that publishing generic pricing information will make much of a difference to our clients but it may help to give an indication of how much a legal matter costs and will help prospective make an informed choice.

It is still always best to call or email for a quotation prior to giving instructions as that gives us the opportunity to provide accurate pricing information.

We always quote for work reasonably and try to give a fixed fee where possible as this gives certainty to our clients about our final billing. We also advise clients before a matter commences what disbursements will cost and why the disbursement is necessary. Disbursements are fees charged by 3^rd parties which we pass to our clients at cost price.

The Consumer Satisfaction Survey found that reputation is the most important factor to consumers when choosing a lawyer (78%), followed by price (72%) and specialism (70%).

Price was the most important factor for consumers when choosing conveyancing. 82% found this to be the most important point to consider when selling or purchasing a property.

The majority of our clients who choose us for conveyancing confirm their instructions to us directly, but some of our conveyancing clients are referred to us. We have arrangements with certain estate agents to refer clients to us. If this is the case we always tell our clients that the work has been referred and that we will be paying a referral fee to the referrer. The referral fee comes out of our costs and the client is not out of pocket because of the arrangement.

From our own client satisfaction questionnaires we know that the majority of our clients choose us because they have used us before or they have received a recommendation to use our services from family or friends that they can trust. We also know that the majority of our clients are extremely happy with the outcome of their matter and that they would return to us if they needed any further legal advice.

If you have a family legal issue or would like a quotation provided for conveyancing, will-writing, probate or power of attorney please contact us on 0191 4555361 or email us at info@hannayslaw.co.uk