Lawyers rush to undercut each other online - well done!
03 September 2010
Two new websites to help
punters esteemed clients to find a lawyer are shortly to take the legal market by storm (they claim).
Both sites -
wigster.com and
bid4fees.co.uk - have a similar aim: to help identify a suitable (cheap) lawyer. Wigster - which is yet to launch - is a price comparison website, of the type last seen flogging car insurance. Users enter the broad parameters of their case and the site then displays comparative fees plus additional added-value service features from registered firms (such as electronic mail correspondence facilities - whatever next?). Firms, who have to pay the site a referral fee, are queuing up to register on the site and provide details of their costs, RollOnFriday is told. Simples, as others might say.
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A meerkat comparing the lawyers yesterday
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Bid4fees provides more of a bespoke service, whereby a registered user enters an outline of his or her legal conundrum, which is then farmed out to law firms to bid for. Quoted fees are set in stone (unless something "
completely unforeseeable" arises), so none of your hourly fees plus disbursements nonsense here. The site gets a 10% cut of the fees, and apparently 2,500 desperate lawyers have registered in the past three weeks - nice work if you can get it. Jobs currently available for bidding lawyers include a bankruptcy in Clackmannanshire and a divorce in Bedfordshire.
In other web news, a very useful guide to the legal profession has been provided by
solicitorswakefield.org. The site describes itself as "
the No1 Wakefield Legal Resource". That's a big claim but unfortunately, the website is almost completely incomprehensible - check out, in particular, the
article on the difference between solicitors and barristers, which comments:
"
Solicitors will also represent their people in the courts at tribunals, and a growing amount will also be further capable in order to represent people in the higher courts, that were, until fairly recently, the world involving barristers."
Come again, Wakefield?