Riding on Slaters' coat-tails
For most high street firms, £1m is a lot of money. Well over their average annual turnover. But £1m is what Slater & Gordon are spending on their first ad campaign, which aired on television earlier this week. Still, it's only a fifth of the estimated £5m that Co-op Legal Services spent on their ad campaign earlier this year. And it's just loose change in comparison with the £15m QualitySolicitors splashed out on their lifestyle ad campaign in March 2012.
The ads produced for all three have their own tone and flavour but the overall message is the same: lawyers for ordinary people and businesses in everyday situations. And unless you weren’t reminded here and there that these adverts are selling legal services, you might think they’re about insurance or medical cover.
Distinguishing the Slater & Gordon proposition from the others is not easy, but it is indicative of a deeper trend in the sector. Lawyers are collectively beginning to accept that the concept of brand is applicable to legal services. It’s a slow process. So slow, it would seem, that Slaters’ head of UK business development Kalle Amanatides confidently told Solicitors Journal: “there are no other legal brands”.
Culture shift
The ban on advertising for legal services was only lifted in the ‘80s. Even then there was a slight disgust that law firms should resort to advertising to get clients. Thirty years on, Slaters’ ads are the latest expression of a deeper shift in the sector. Lawyers are reclaiming the ground that claims management companies had been occupying unchallenged. But even looking at the large players, approaches can be radically different.
While QS are trading on the ‘solicitor’ brand, Slaters have a different strategy. Their logo doesn’t mention the word ‘solicitors’; it uses the word ‘lawyers’. And instead of going down the franchise route, it is buying up firms across the country. Very quickly. Asked earlier this week about the possible acquisition of Pannone, Amanatides said Slaters talked to a lot of firms all the time about possible acquisition. Pannone would be just one of them, she said. A few days later and, as we are going to press, reports are coming out about a Pannone break-up, with Slaters picking up some of the pieces.
For smaller firms, this is no less of a challenge but there is one marginal comfort which could turn out to be of huge significance. These ad campaigns are raising awareness of legal services as a whole. Rocket Lawyer’s chief executive Mark Edwards is not alone in believing that there is a latent market for legal services worth billions of pounds.
High street firms just don’t have the kind of money that QS, Co-op and Slaters are throwing at big ad agencies. But they can ride on their coat-tails. All the surveys and reports produced by the likes of the Consumer Panel indicate that consumers and small businesses want to be able to interact with their lawyers. Mostly, this means being accessible, which in practice means being local. It doesn’t mean that smaller firms shouldn’t review their value proposition, but their predicament is perhaps not as devastating as it appears.