'What is your favourite crisp flavour?' legal regulators ask consumers

Legal Choices, the legal regulators' consumer-friendly website, went live today with a variety of polls and quizzes, including one which asked consumers about their favourite crisp flavour.

The suggested answers are: ready salted, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, carrot and coriander, or, rather bizarrely, 'hedgehog'.

Another quiz, entitled 'are you word perfect?', tests consumers' knowledge of the jargon they might come across in the legal world.

A question on the phrase 'actus reus' gives, as an example of where people might see it: 'The actus reus of theft is horrible for the victim.'

Another question, on the word 'notwithstanding', suggests consumers may come across it in a conversation about the weather, presumably with their lawyers: 'Notwithstanding the terrible weather, the holiday was great'.

The quiz begins with a question on the phrase 'inter se', and the example: 'This document is a contract between him and his team, and between all the team members inter se'.

The website, www.legalchoices.org.uk, is a collaboration between the SRA, Bar Standards Board, ILEX Professional Standards and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers.

The SRA said, at the time it was announced last autumn, that its aim was to "signpost people to information and support provided by different legal regulators and aim to help people with the choices and decisions they are faced with before, during, or after using a legal service."

The site has sections on types of lawyers, what to do if you want to complain (which directs people to LeO), legal costs and legal issues, such as employment and probate.

Some SRA board members expressed concerns in the autumn that Legal Choices would end up as a law firm version of TripAdvisor, with critical reviews of services and complaints statistics.

Mehrunissa Lalani, director of inclusion at the SRA, replied that the site would not be a TripAdvisor or a Solicitors from Hell, but a "one-stop shop, which provides all the information you need on legal regulation with links to the regulators".

Along with the major regulators, the Costs Lawyers Standards Board, the Intellectual Property Board and the Faculty Office also feature on Legal Choices.