The internet doesn't solve every problem

26 Feb 2014News

Seeing a client across the table is all very 1960s, but it does help, says Russell Conway

It is becoming a popular sport to knock into touch the age-old "across the table" advice model.

Commentators are warning of how the lawyers giving one-to-one advice are likely to become extinct like dinosaurs or mammoths.

New methods of downloading documents appear by the day and, it is true, there are alternative methods of advising clients now that simply did not exist all those years ago when we were using manual type-writers and telex-remember that? Who would have thought that we are now able to advise clients by text, e-mail and Skype? 20 years ago we would have all laughed and scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. I suspect the then Law Society would have banned such novel and revolutionary ideas.

I have a fond memory of a fax salesman coming to see me 25 years ago and my suggesting that the telex was "good for another 10 years" was of course, very badly wrong. But now we are seeing the decline of the fax machine. Very few of these will exist in 5 years' time and as for the DX, I suspect that will be on its deathbed very soon.

The internet gives us so many opportunities and legal advice fits neatly into that regime, but, and I must stress this, not every problem can be solved in this way.

I work through an organisation that offers housing advice for single men going through divorce and the consequent housing implications. They ask a question, anonymously, and I strive to give a meaningful reply. It is all done via the medium of the internet.

The questions are brief. They rarely give all the facts. There are no attachments and I do not really know the full facts or strength of the case.

I give a response which tries hard to be positive, fact intensive and hopeful, if possible, but so often it is impossible to know how to respond. I simply do not have the tenancy agreement in front of me or the terms of the mortgage deed.

A great deal of my practice deals with housing matters; I see clients with fistfuls of papers, old rent books, tenancy agreements and correspondence going back to the year dot. These are the documents that matter and can determine whether someone can stay in their home or be evicted.

Similarly, in the case of disrepair it is only by seeing a client, perhaps visiting his home and establishing how bad the disrepair is that one can have a full idea of what sort of case you are dealing with.

Clients can be very unforthcoming. I have had clients in rent arrears who are scared stiff to mention the fact that there is water pouring through their roof. They feel that by making waves about the state of repair of a property they will be dealt with far more severely by their landlord or the court.

Seeing a client across the table is all very 1960s, but it does help. It allows a lawyer to get to the root of a problem and make it right. A lot of clients are still a little suspicious of new technology, legal aid clients in particular.

The days of the paperless office and internet only advice may one day be the norm, but for the moment there is an alternative and I would defend it to the bitter end.

Maybe it's because the clients like a cuddle with Cosmo the office Labrador. That relaxes them enough to give me all the facts.

It's difficult to cuddle a soppy old dog online, but who knows what the future will bring -a virtual Labrador?

Russell Conway is senior partner at Oliver Fisher