An investigation by England’s legal profession oversight body into how individual consumers identify and respond to legal problems has shown that 44 per cent of those surveyed sought professional legal advice when confronted with a legal problem. A further 12 per cent took advice from friends and family, while 27 per cent handled legal problems without help and 14 per cent did nothing at all.

Real people

The Legal Services Benchmarking report – conducted by the Legal Services Board – surveyed 4,017 participants. The board’s chief executive, Chris Kenny, commented: ‘For the legal services market to function effectively and in consumers’ interests, we need to understand how real people make real decisions about the myriad of legal issues they face in life. The findings emphasise the potential demand for high quality low cost legal services across a wide range of different problem types to support consumers in responding to everyday legal problems.’
Meanwhile, a leading independent provider of law firm financial services to the maintains that the number of sole practitioner law firms in England has continued to fall as banks withdraw support for small law firms.
According to research from Sycap, the number of sole practitioners fell from 3,692 last year to 3,574 in March 2012. Over the last five years, the number of sole practitioner firms has dropped 17 per cent.

Merge or go bust

Syscap chief executive Philip White commented: ‘Small law firms are being told by their banks that they need to merge if they want the continuing support of their lender. It seems that some lenders are also predicting a very pessimistic future for high street law firms as a result of the entry of new competitors like the Co-op.
 ‘Whilst many high street law firms could really do with investing in IT and marketing to deal with this new competition, they are going to find it a real struggle to get approval for these loans from their traditional banks.
‘Most banks are very reluctant to lend money to businesses to acquire IT – which is a bit strange as IT is a real boost to productivity and in many cases can provide a competitive advantage.’