It was my pleasure and privilege to serve on the Legal Services Consumer Panel since 2019 and our last Panel meeting, my final meeting shared with two brilliant colleagues departing the same day, was a time to reflect on progress made. It is also ten years since the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), in its 2016 Legal Services Market Study, stated that a lack of transparency was a barrier to competition and consumer choice.
Has transparency improved since 2019?
This important question is not easy to answer as the right people to ask the question are, of course, consumers of Legal Services. Happily, the Panel invest in an annual Tracker Survey that asks consumers a range of questions relating to how they choose and use the services they need. As someone with a passion for understanding the consumer and a qualified market researcher, I worked closely with fellow Panel Members and the research companies we commissioned to undertake the survey work throughout my tenure.
The Panel has sought to encourage the regulators to drive improvement in the transparency of two key factors with a focus on improving consumer choice; price and quality. Consumer perception matters and their view on whether they are getting value for money is one indicator that the market is working well for them. My decades of experience designing and delivering strategies and transformation to governments and leading commercial organisations confirms that this perception is also a good measure of success for the service provider too.
The good news from the survey results is that there has been some, albeit limited, improvement in price transparency. Typically, this is limited to some firms publishing indicative prices for frequently used services. The availability of price information online has contributed to this perception of improvement. Sadly, the overall picture is patchy with most pricing caveated to the point of being useless to compare costs meaningfully.
It is obvious that Legal Services are often complex and their provision dependent on the individual circumstances of each consumer. The Panel advocates strongly that providers consider the individual needs of each consumer with care. However, it is obvious to me, after years of observing providers and their regulators, that there are thousands of similar circumstances for repeated service needs that could form the basis for some degree of certainty in offering indicative prices more widely and reliably.
The bad news is that there has been little progress on transparency of the quality of service provision. This is disappointing as it has been an active and repeated topic of discussion with the Legal Services Board and all the other regulators. I have worked with myriad organisations on designing and implementing the means of measuring and responding to consumers’ perceptions of the quality of service they experience. In our increasingly digital world, many are familiar with the star ratings used by online retailers and digital comparison websites. Their ubiquity is testament to their perceived value by consumers. Retailers see these ratings as a critical part of their sales and marketing efforts.
Given the breadth and depth of expertise and knowledge available, this poor progress is all the more damning. This expertise is not limited to commercial enterprise; many governments have implemented such techniques as the Balanced Scorecard to measure service quality measurement that evaluates consumer perception and cost to optimise value for taxpayer pounds spent.
The complexity argument used to defend limited progress on price transparency has been deployed for quality measures too. The more subjective nature of measuring consumer perception can be off-putting. However, a whole industry exists to provide the consumer survey skills and expertise that we use to run our Tracker Survey. Herein lies hope for future progress. I have seen a significant increase in the use of consumer research by the regulators in my time on the Panel and been delighted to be invited to contribute my expertise to these efforts.
A brighter future?
Quality of service transparency is, I would argue, more important than price transparency. Fundamental to the success of any service provider is the relationship between the consumer and those that serve them. Inviting an open conversation on the experience of the consumer provides the best source of information on the performance of the legal professional. As such it is the best source of feedback and thereby of performance improvement to compete effectively.
The value of this information and the nascent use of market research by the regulators offers an opportunity to require the measurement and publication of service quality indicators. The relationship between consumer feedback and improving professional standards has long been promoted by the representative bodies. A good example of recent efforts to move in the right direction has been the LSB’s recent work investigating first tier complaints. This is consumer feedback on quality.
My hope is that priority is not just given but also acted upon here – by both regulators AND representative bodies. I argue for this not just because I have seen the Panel pushing for this for over six years and us all feeling unheard. It is also personal because over thirty years ago I was asked to look at the complaints statistics of an organisation appropriately called the Solicitors’ Complaints Bureau. The results were shocking to me as the volume was so high. The Law Society Gazette commented on 20th March 1996 that “the proposal to replace the Solicitors Complaints Bureau (SCB) with the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors (OFSOL), approved by the Law Society’s Council two weeks ago, made no claim to represent radical change.” Surely after thirty years there must be hope for change?
Paul Crook, former LSCP Panel Member