hello everybody um good afternoon and thank you very much for joining us at this session on transparency rules um helping customers make informed decisions um now I just want to say something very briefly about how this is going to work um we're going to first of all see uh the recording of presentation from our session at the Compliance Conference that we held a couple of weeks ago um and uh so you be able to watch that but we do want to make this session as interactive as possible um so after we've watched that we are going to have some time for some Q&A and we've pulled back together U most of the panel that were there at the Compliance Conference um so you've got me I'm aen Armstrong I'm executive director of innovation strategy and external Affairs at the SR and I'm joined by Jackie Griff R who is head of regory policy at the SRA I'm also um welcoming Roy mcgara who is employment Lister Advocate at Ma marara law and we're also joined by Graham Wilkinson who's senior Partnerships manager at trust pilot unfortunately Sarah Chambers who you'll see on the video in a moment from the legal services Consumer Panel wasn't able to join us today um but um those of us who are here are here to answer your questions um and I just want to explain that in order to ask a question uh what you need to do is click on the link below the broadcast and you can submit your your question it's always nice to know who's asking the question so uh you know please put your name in if if you can but we're we're also happy to answer questions um if you want to remain anonymous um you just need to type the question in um so we're very much looking forward to to your questions later on but first we'll go to the record recording um and we think that's going to last um just under 35 minutes so we'll see you shortly after that thank you so much for joining this session um just to introduce myself I'm aen Armstrong um I'm an executive director uh for strategy Innovation and external Affairs at the SRA um and I'm delighted to be uh chairing uh this panel session um on such an interesting and important topic um really about helping consumers make informed decisions um and since the introduction of the transparency rules uh in 2016 um we have seen a significant Improvement in how customers are engaging uh with the legal services Market um and how they make choices about the providers uh that they choose uh based on their needs and preferences but um I have to say I don't think we have seen uh yet the transformative um change that's been envisaged uh particularly by the the CMA when it looked at um its Market study in 2016 so we are pushing on and continuing to consider what more we could do to really help help uh consumers make informed choices about um how they purchase uh Legal Services um and you just from an SRA perspective you know we do think that consumers need to be able to choose legal services that really fit their individual needs their preferences and crucially their budgets as well um and so when we introduced the transparency rules back in 2018 our aim was really to ensure that individuals have the information that they need at the the time to make informed choices um and this included making sure that consumers understand the services that are on offer have Clarity of the prices for those services and also understand the protections that come with using a regulated provider um and the ability um for consumers to choose legal services does come with um its own set of challenges uh because of the very nature of legal services and the situation that individuals find themselves in um you know we are thinking of course that individuals will sometimes only occasionally need Legal Services um and when they do need them we're quite often seeing people in um you know periods of of distress in their life um or maybe at a particularly vulnerable point where they're they're needing uh the help and advice um and we also know from our consumer research to date that um you know people are busy um or stressed and stretched and they may prefer to rely on a a recommendation rather than doing their own research so there are challenges about uh this issue and how we can enable um clearer choices um and so recognizing these challenges I think today though we really want to discuss what further steps um we can do to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions and ultimately you know to help drive that choice um and transparency in the in the market to benefit all consumers um so the format uh this afternoon is first uh we're going to hear from our our panel who am I introduced in a moment but then I am going to leave plenty of time for for questions um and Reflections um at the end so I I will be coming to you after that let me first just briefly introduce uh the panel I am not going to give you um uh highlights of their brilliant careers because what I am going to say to you is if you haven't already please do look at the app all of the speaker biographies are on there but it's also an opportunity for you to give us feedback on on this session as well um but if I I just start um uh we've got with us um Jackie griffi who is uh the head of regulatory policy at the S um next to her is Sarah Chambers who's the chair of the legal services Consumer Panel um and on my other side um uh Roy mangara who is um employment uh solicor Advocate um at mangara law um and marara law took part in our um Quality indicators pilot so I'm sure we will pick that up as we go through um and uh last but not least um gram Wilkinson who is senior partner manager at trust pilot and trust pilot also took part in that pilot um so I'm going to um kicks off with uh Jackie um I we recently um commissioned an independent three-year evaluation of our transparency rules and we're going to be publishing that shortly and we've also published our quality indicators pilot um and so Jackie I wondered if I could invite you just to um kick us off and and talk us through briefly the the main findings of those pieces of work thank you of course no problem um so it feels like a little while ago now that the transparency rules were introduced um and I'm sure I'm talking to quite an informed audience but just as a brief recap it includes requirements to publish price and service information for certain areas of law um sure you quite know that and some of the service information is things like the key stages the likely time scales what the experience of the staff of the firm Are and it's purpose really as aen has already really alluded to is firstly so that consumers can see whether the legal service is Affordable for them um because we knew at the time back in 2018 that many consumers weren't even looking to purchase Legal Services because of an assumption that they couldn't afford it um and then also it's to enable consumers to shop around to find the service that suits their needs the best and ultimately to Drive competition um in the legal services market for the benefit of everyone um so we committed to um an evaluation process when we introduced the transparency rules to see if it was working to achieve its aims um and we've just completed the three-year evaluation of transparency rules and we've not yet published it that will be coming soon but I'm going to give you a bit of a sneak preview on some of the main findings today um we haven't got time for many but just pulling out some of the key ones um so first of all it has found really positively that an increasing number of consumers are now accessing information about the price and service of those Services um and 55% to instructed solicitors had first compared those services so they've been on to look at more than one provider and they compared the prices and the services so that's really positive when we did a a one-year evaluation it was 46% so that's significantly increased and it's it's much much higher than where we started before the came into place um but as aen said we're not where we hope to get to um and so the the reviewers also found that a significant proportion of consumers are finding it difficult to actually make that comparison so positively 55% Sayes easy to compare but 21% which is quite a number it's one in five consumers so it's really difficult to compare firms and the reasons that they're giving us are that prices are presented differently um that services are described differently be that how do you compare the quality of a firm which is something that people are interested in and that's not covered by the transparency rules and we also talk to firms or the the supplier who does the evaluation for us talks to firms as part of the process and firms also said um that they aren't always certain about how to present the information or how much detail that they're supposed to give um so that's a a message that's coming to us from both sides um and it was also sort of echoed the findings from the competition and markets author when they return to the legal services Market in 2020 to see what progress have been made since its original study so they again said lots of new information is out there firms are much more transparent since the transparency rules came in but that some improvements are needed in that comparability space and also in quality in how consumers can can see what the quality is of what they're going to be buying and they can compare that um so you may may know already that we did do equ quality indic indicators pilot back in 2021 now um to look at what does quality mean to Consumers and how might we make information about quality more available to them um so quality sort of falls into two main sort of categories in legal services so one's about the accuracy of the work done and one's about the customer service that was given to the consumer um so we wanted to explore what information can we put out there what information would consumers consumers find most useful um and being a that there's a growing Trend to look for information online we wanted to see is there increasing role for comparison websites or other digital tools in the legal services Market to be used um so we launched that that pilot it it was a 12month pilot so it it was over quite a long period of time involved more than 70 of our regulated firms involved nine digital comparison tools or comparison websites you might call them and and other parties got involved too including people like the land registry um and we we supported that with several pieces of research um so we found that that that the use of online reviews by consumers when purchasing Legal Services is relatively low um when you compare it to other Industries so overall about 22% um of consumers use online reviews to help them choose a legal service provider which compares to 88% for other types of purchasing decisions um so there's still there's still some way to go with that but um there's an overwhelming agreement amongst consumers that reviews are the most helpful indicator of quality when they are purchasing legal services so 92% of consumers said it was the most helpful thing to look for so we think there is room for improvement there and although firms firms that were using online reviews so we found that 44% of firms told us that they were engaging with online reviews about their firm um and those firms reported real benefits to the firm of doing so from attracting new clients which was the the main benefit and obviously of particular interest to more intangible things like we saw many instances of firms who were using it to recognize staff and to see those staff that were doing a good job and to build Morel within their teams um and the pilot it's fair to say did act as a catalyst to increase engagement both on the consumer and on the The Firm side with online reviews but as I said there's still a minority of firms that are engaging with them so we think there is there is some room for improvement there just very briefly if I could Jackie do you have um uh maybe some insights of of where we go next on on this yes so it's obviously something that we're thinking about I think hopefully as I laid out the sort of main findings it sort of becomes clear where the next steps might be so so we've got three main areas that we're thinking about where do we still need to make improvements so the first one is is improving comparability of the information so how do we make it so that consumers find find it easier to compare and firms understand more about what information they actually should put out there um so the the transparency rules are are necessarily flexible in what we say that firms can publish with their prices and services because we want to recognize the bespoke nature of of legal services but at the same time if you go on to to firm's websites every firm does it slightly differently because we haven't we haven't laid down any sort of specific criteria so what we want to do is think about is there a way to increase the standardization around how that information is presented um so that consumers find it easier to compare that information um we also know um that what consumers want most often when they're choosing a provider is to know about what is the price and what is the level of service and younger consumers and those who are firsttime uh purchasers of Legal Services they're the ones who are particularly likely to go online to see if they can find that information um but we know as you might expect um the services that are not covered by the transparency rules the the level of information available is much lower than for the services that are covered by the transparency rules so we'll be thinking about what we can do to increase the information available on those other services things like family law things like will writing uh where there's now a real apparent Gap in information available and then finally um we think that it's really clear that online reviews are a really important source of information for consumers to indicate what the quality of the firm might be um so we want to think about what we might be able to do to encourage more engagement from providers uh with online reviews sort of building on that quality indicators pilot we need to think about this carefully we know that there's some anxiety amongst some firms uh for for some really valid reasons we want to think about are there circumstances in which we might not encourage online reviews for example example criminal defense is it appropriate there we want to think about is it just not useful in some circumstances so if you're airm that only markets to commercial clients is it useful for you to engage in online reviews um so we want to be quite careful about how we think about next steps there um also we know firms are really nervous about fake and malicious reviews so we need to think about how we manage that um so in taking forward the thinking on that we think it will be really valuable to engage with experts on competition um because we need to remember that the the root of our purpose is to drive effective competition in the legal services Market um and that's not an easy thing to do uh because of the infrequency of purchasing the legal services market and because of the bespoke nature of the services so we think that would be Merit in engaging with competition experts um and we also need to be aware that it's firmly on the agenda of our regulator the legal services board and there you may have seen uh published a policy statement in April last year on their expectations of us in that space and the the sort of outcomes they want us to pursue so we need to take that into account as we're planning our next steps and just make sure that whatever we do is achieving those outcomes are expected of us thank you Jackie um and I really want to focus on the consumer perspective so I wonder if I can ask um Sarah for a few um uh insights really into the behaviors and expectations of of consumers and and how they're changing and really what kind of action you want to see thanks alen yes I'm very glad that you want to focus on consumers because I think that's what we should all be doing but that's CU I chair the legal services Consumer Panel our task is to uh keep the Legal Services Board honest and also the S and the other legal regulators and by honest I mean working to actually improve uh the way that uh consumers experience uh the legal services sector so it's not just there for to do what the professionals want them to do um before I start can I just quickly ask how many of you in the room are mainly compliance officers you spend most of your time doing compliance just brief hands so that's quite a lot quite a lot there how many of you spend most of your time soliciting excuse the language uh just making it sound more fun than it is it's it sounds looks like about the same that's interesting um and how many of you spend at least a a substantial part of your time marketing the services that your firm produces that's a very much smaller number only about four or five of you right so that's a Pity I'm glad there are some sort of lots of people doing soliciting um but the reason I asked the question is that I was expecting a large number of you to be compliance officers because this is a Compliance Conference um but actually transparency although There are rules about about it and it is very important that they're compli complied with I don't regard it as essentially a compliance issue I regard it as a business issue and an opportunity um it's an opportunity for you and your firms to differentiate yourselves from your competitors to show what it is you're offering to Consumers why what you're offering is better what he and she is offering and how um and to make your consu your clients and your potential clients understand what you're giving so that your clients and potential future clients have the best opportunity to choose the The Firm or the solicitor that works for them so I regard that as as the main business and then compliance is just something that should follow if you're not doing the bare minimum so anyway I'm glad there's all three of you here um I was asked to explain what what's happening in the market uh place out there we do an annual tracker survey and these are sorts of questions that we ask on a very regular basis um it is quite clear from our repeated annual tracker surveys that shopping around has increased quite significantly over time though worryingly it's very slow um and there's evidence over the last year or so that it might be Plateau it's certainly not going up at the pace that we would like it to um and also worryingly um we are been it's been reported to us that information about price and about quality is actually slightly harder uh for potential clients to find now than it was a year ago um and in particular price comparisons between firms has become harder uh one in five consumers think they've got no choice of Provider um and that number is also coming down rather than going up and I think as Jackie mentioned um about one in five say that they fight that that when they do try and shop around they find it really hard uh to compare prices and services so we think this is a hugely lost opportunity for you in business terms and from the consumer's point of view it's it really makes their life difficult if they can't work out how much they're going to pay uh what they're going to get for it how they're going to get it how quickly they're going to get it how they're going to be communicated with um then they're going to be wanting to engage with the legal services sector less than they otherwise would um they really are looking for information they want it and if you provide it in an appropriate way um you know really good comprehensive information about prices not just something really vague and huge ranges which sometimes we find um you will find that you will probably find far more people coming to choose your firm uh if it's difficult for you to work out exactly how to do that you there are some tricks um and I think you're going to hear from uh gram later about um how uh digital comparison websites can help you uh in terms terms of working out how to do that sort of thing but you don't have to use digital comparison websites you can do it on your own if you provide if if you uh uh produce some really good websites with really really good comprehensible uh information and you should just bear in mind that most consumers overestimate the cost of Legal Services they think legal services are really expensive they often are I think I saw somebody from Clifford chance in the room I'm sure your services are really expensive but we're not really talking about your customers we're talking about you the most most normal people um and actually um sorry Clifford chance it's not just you um um um we're we're talking mainly about about sort of you know uh uh High say High Street consumers that's you know what I mean uh normal householders uh uh rather than uh employees and that sort of thing rather than big businesses um you should you you if if you help to give them the information they will come to you uh you will be able to show them and once they once they do use your services they will say that's good value for money so what do I want from you Regulators what's next steps for you and I think actually Jackie expressed it quite well I want you to be worrying about differentiating your services I want The Regulators to be thinking more about standardization that sounds like a contradiction I don't think it is I think there should be standardization um ac across the board in some minimum basic standards of what you should all be showing to customers and then that's the platform of which you bounce upwards and produce more and better um and show show that you can really do this stuff better but it only works if if customers can compare across the basic stuff so I want you to really focus on standardization and of course monitoring what's going on out there because some of you guys are doing it really well we're going to be hearing from Roy I think you Roy does it rather well lots of people do it well and some don't and I think the ones that are really really not doing it well um you know do need eventually to be brought to book so that comes to enforcement um and then along with the monitoring um there's a sort of broad evaluation which I think you're doing which um of of of how the system is going and to try and make sure we learn from what's going well what's going not so well and try and hurry up and do it a bit faster is that thank you answer the question absolutely and the messages have been heard um so that's great thank you Sarah um I'm going to come to you next uh Ro could you just tell us a bit you know from a providers perspective kind of you know your insights on um using uh these tools and actually the kind of opportunities that that they present thank you yes I think in terms of my own experience so I've been I've had my own FM for about three years now and that experience has been really pivotal for me particularly from the perspective on transparency and seeing it from a consumer point of view I think as lawyers we're so used to talking and and therefore when it comes to talking about ourselves we place that same mindset as well but actually I found that my clients or potential consumers are not necessarily interested in how much lore I know that's that's almost a given it's like going to a gpn and asking them what their experience is most of the time you go there you expect them to know their stuff and actually you're much more interested in how was that experience for you how did they make you feel what are the extra things you didn't expect out of that particular experience and that's the same thing when it comes to Legal Services and I found for me particularly with online review platforms or having making clients become ambassadors for the firm that's been really great for me and and that's got me from A to B quite successfully in terms of letting the clients speak of their own experiences with the firm because say for example when you guys book holidays how often do you look at reviews or people who've been to places or when you go to restaurants how often do you look at reviews as well so I I Look to try and apply that same mindset when it comes to Legal Services I found that most people will shop around as it were and yes prize is important but experience is important as well now um we all potentially do different areas of law we all come from different backgrounds in that respect too and so moving away from the opportunities for the firm that I've just talked about when it comes to the sometimes the challenges when it comes to pricing that can be quite difficult particularly where each particular piece of work may be popoke so often it might be quite difficult to say to all of your clients hey this is the general price for X in some cases it's easy in some cases it's not but the current transparency rules are quite helpful in terms of providing the what we ought to put on the there and and that's a given and that's a great start um but if we can do more to help beat down that that odd generalization as you described about people thinking that legal services are super expensive uh well more expensive than they are in reality perhaps there's a better way of framing it again I think we get that one step closer to clients it's just getting them from going online to picking up the phone or sending that email and speaking to you and then taking the journey from there so those are all the opportunities but what about more difficulties and I think someone's hinted on it about sometimes you can get if you're going to say yep we're going to go ahead and have our online platforms and get our online reviews sometimes you can't please everyone and the reality is you may get a review on there that's malicious or ill intended or otherwise and actually that can do quite a lot of damage to a firm um whether that's Justified or not but that's I suppose part and parcel of of the journey in trying to make sure that each of your members of Staff do the best that they can do and when you do get the odd occasion because we we're all human beings you get that that that odd cookie who comes along and is just never pleased no matter what you do and still leaves that that bad review hopefully you've got plenty of other reviews on your on your online platform or otherwise that can help cushion that and I can speak from my own experience in having um hundreds of really wonderful reviews and this one aw 4 one and I thought oh no um but actually the immediate response for me was to try and respond in kind to each of the points but actually my response was thank you for your review for anyone else who's looking at my reviews feel free to have a look at the rest of the other testimonials which speak more true to the firm because ultimately it's up to you so what I would say is don't be afraid of the odd person out there who may leave a bad review and think of the bigger picture cuz most of us are rational of course you're going to expect a bad review when you look at going for your holidays or looking for a restaurant that happens but we all are quite holistic in our thinking so that's how I'd look to encourage everyone on that subject thank you really interesting um gra I'm going to come to you last but not least I just want to invite you really to um talk to us a bit about the digital comparison tools both from the perspective of you know where you think they can help consumers and also the um you know how firms can can view them and use them well a lot I mean a lot of what I'm about to talk about is already been covered so if the legal sector doesn't work out for you guys you can come and work for trust pilot at any stage because the way you talk about reviews is absolutely brilliant um so I I'm in quite a unique position here because like I don't work in the legal sector I work for trust pilot so coming into this environment is is is quite strange for me um it's almost and don't take any offense to this it's almost like being transported back like 10 years in time because my background is traditionally e-commerce so these conversations were happening like in the early in the early teens about the necessity to actually use reviews harness social proof and what it can do for a business and like we've already covered there are progressions in the legal sector around how you guys are sort of catching up there's still a lot of ground to be made to sort of highlight this I mean in in traditional like e-commerce like hospitality even like Financial Services these businesses have been have been utilizing reviews since since the technology was available and it's always been available for you guys to use as well and it's only really in the last sort of year year and a half that at trust pilot anyway we've started to see really good progression and I'll highlight that by saying so we have two categories on our website which which sort of house like legal sector legal legal firms so since the pilot was uh was launched in January 21 MH so we've seen in terms of the amount of organizations active in those categories they've gone uh they've doubled the amount of reviews that we have in that category in those two categories sorry have doubled the amount of organizations who house those reviews has gone up by 65% and a really key stat as well is the amount of organizations who are using our premium features so actually paying to use trust pilot and and there's a big difference between using our free plan and our paid plan because you harness everything that cross pilot has to offer and you really make a go of of of utilizing it as for your online online reputation that those numbers have gone up by 30% as well so there's been huge strides trust my it's been going since 2009 so to see those numbers and those the sort of rising usage just over the last like 12 to 18 months is is really really significant um and why do I think this is so I say I would say that primarily consumer Behavior behavior is changing the way that people interact online and their thirst for transparency is nothing like what it used to be like four or five years ago I would put a lot of that down to the pandemic so during the pandemic what we saw was before the pandemic if someone like we do a lot of surveys on this and if we said to like a case study like where do you get your most trusted source of information and recommendations from it it it was hands down it was friends and family it was always friends and family but during the pandemic we saw lockdowns we saw uh social distancing and people were driven apart so essentially what happened is I mean everybody all of us saw it the High Street died a death everybody went online and this is people of all ages as well it wasn't just young people like even my parents learned how to use like how to research things it if you know them it's a miracle um but basically what happened was people weren't just going online for shopping in a traditional sense they were going online for absolutely everything everything they were even going online to maintain relationships so a lot of time was spent in front of laptops in front of desktops in front of mobiles and as part of that sort of consumer Journey we saw that for the first time ever thirdparty review platforms overtook traditional uh friends and family recommendations in terms of the most trusted source of information so we this is the opportunity that we're talking about for you guys because in theory what we're saying is we now know how people how people I suppose shop online is is not that relevant to you guys but people will still go online to research they will go online to figure out who they want to give their business to who they want to submit an inquiry to so the opportunity for you guys is to actually take advantage of that so we know how what what people are doing we know it's not really good enough just to say well we've got a website a website is an online presence it's not a reputation and the best way to create a reputation is to harness the voice of your past clients to be that reputation so exactly like Roy was saying let your customers let your clients speak on your behalf and let them tell your perspective clients how great you are at what you do there's no more powerful form of interaction than somebody telling somebody else who they can relate to that your firm is really good and you could be trusted and you're great at what you do and you should definitely go and speak to them that's the element of social proof and we always whenever we talk about reviews we talk about this form of social proof and if anybody doesn't know what social proof is it's it's an element of Conformity and it it plays into human nature and essentially it boils down to the fact that humans are just like sheep so we like to walk the path that other people have have gone before we like to we like in times of when we don't know what to do we look to others and it's the same when people operate online it's the same when people decide which law firm they want to engage with they want to know that someone's been there before and they can vouch for you that you're really good at what you do and they should submit an inquiry to you um so in theory that's yeah that that that's what a third party review platform can do for you in terms of actually encouraging it within the industry this is really difficult for me to speak about because it has been so embedded in my like professional history for such a long time now but one thing I would say is if you know consumers like prospective clients are searching online you know where they're going you know what's in their mindset and what information they want to gather put yourself in their shoes and have a look at your firm and how your online reputation exists online in what capacity does your online reputation EX exist and if you put yourself in the shoes of of a perspective future client have you got a good enough online reputation for somebody to find you research you learn everything about you and then say I'm going to submit an inquiry I'm going to pick up the phone and if you don't then it's something you should desperately look at because a lot of other people are doing it if you don't have that online reputation somebody else will and I guarantee you they're the ones who will win the business at the end of the day I think I yeah that's great thank you thank you very much thank you great so um I hope you agree they were great interventions and a really interesting start to our discussion so just as a reminder we've got um a few questions and comments coming already but if you want to add your own question please click the link um uh on the screen and you can submit a question uh now as as we're discussing um but what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick off a couple of points that have come through already um we had um a a question I don't have a name um that was about um when we've done our compliance checks on firms in relation to the transparency rules um was that compliance done by Ai and and kind of the appropriate of that if so um and I'm going to come to you Jackie on that question but I'm also going to uh combine it with another question which uh we've had through from um greme Jones has asked a question um about being told that um a firm wasn't compliant because of a an absence of a compliance policy when when in fact there was and and and he suggested it clearly was um and um so you know a question really around um the sr's accuracy in in the compliance checks so Jackie can I ask you to address those couple of points please yeah definitely um so um in terms of the latest round of compliance checks no we didn't use AI um we have a team um who understand the transparency rules and who look at individual firms websites um to see if there is compliance or not um to the person who thinks that they they got told that they were not compliant when that wasn't accurate I can can only apologize if that has turned out to be the case um our team spend a certain number of a certain amount of time trolling the website to the best of their ability to try to find the information um so I'm not saying it was in this particular case but it could have been that that they were unable to find that information if it wasn't really accessible and really clear um where you might find that complaints policy um but if you haven't already done so if you get into touch with us and let us know and perhaps send a link to where we can find that information then that's quite an easy thing to rectify and and if it's there um then then I imagine you're talking about fixed penalties and of course you won't get a fixed penalty if you're able to demonstrate that it's there thanks Jackie um there is another um quite specific question that that's come through which I I'll go to next I I suspect also um Jackie is is best place to to answer um and it's really a question around um clarifying um how VI vat should be um covered in terms of of web pricing um so so Jackie if you could just um say a little bit about that that would be great yeah there's a specific vat requirement in the transparency rules which I imagine is is being referred to and the idea there is that consumers don't necessarily know whether legal services are subject to vat or not um and international consumers may have different rules that apply to them and also um the cost of Legal Services is often made up of the fees and quite Hefty dispersements in some cases are they subject to vat or not and so it's just to make sure that their consumer is really clear um on their vat position um we may have I've I've had experience of being caught out in the past with say Builders when you get a quote and you don't realize um whether that that didn't include vat and and if it's 20% that's quite a hefty extra cost that you weren't expecting um so you can either say subject to vat at 20% as long as what is subject to vat is there and and consumers can calculate 20% or you can give the figure of what the vat might be um either one it doesn't have to be both that's great thank you and there's also a comment come through about asking us to look again at our our worked examples on that very happy for for us to take that one away um please do uh put through uh questions we've had a um you know more of a a comment come through as as well um which is um really the point and I I'll come to you Jackie and then ask um royan and grae whether they have any Reflections um about um you know a view that perhaps the transparency rules aren't very helpful at all for for consumers um and you know really a question about about whether we we need them at all um Jackie do you want to to comment on that yeah great um so we've just published the three-year evaluation I I talked a bit about it in the recording that you just saw since since that day it has been published so you can have a read some of the main findings and how consumers are telling us that they do value that information um of course the information that you have to publish because of the transparency rules is only one of the tools that consumers do use they also use Word of Mouth recommendations they look at the reputation of the firm they might look at the regulatory history of the firm and things like that but we think that the information published is a really crucial tool um for consumers to use um I just wanted to share one sort of one sort of an thing with you which was before the transparency rules were published 63% of adults told us that they saw Legal Services as unaffordable um and that was one of the key reasons that people decided not to employ a solicitor at to uh um and to to just try and deal with legal situations on their own in the first year our first evaluation of transparency rules one year on it was down to 10% of consumers who were looking at prices on a firm's website then saw that as unaffordable so that's made a massive difference um to Consumers making that F first informed Choice as to whether to even instruct a solicitor or not yeah no I think I think that that's really helpful and is this point that I've heard before about um you know in the absence of information um you know I think we do hear that uh customers and potential clients are making assumptions um and it is really helpful to have real information uh for people um Roy I I was going to ask just in in your experience was there anything to add about um you know the the difference or or the impact that the transparency rules have made thank you yes I mean I'm inclined to to disagree with with this with the initial statement and the reason I do is because well one the stats seem to speak for themselves in terms of the dramatic drop from the 60% to the 10% but more so while every area of law is different I think it's always much more helpful to have even if it's just a general perspective of what costs look like for most people talking about money or finances can be an awkward subject and a lot of people may feel less inclined to want to pick up the phone and get involved in that kind of discussion with the law firm before really committing so having it in some sort of clear way on a website even it's just for the purpose of litigation for example or otherwise I think my view is that that does at least it does more than than the lack thereof in terms of helping our clients be that one more step closer to seeing us as a legal profession that's much more um well to call the phrase transparent in terms of our services thank you Roy um grae I was just going to ask you I mean possibly even from a wider or or other sector perspective um whether you had a view on on this question of of kind of basic requirements for transparency yeah I've got quite a subjective view on this I suppose being an employee of trust pilot but um uh just reiterating what you would have seen in the video before my background is is traditional e-commerce so I see this across so many different sectors of people shopping online and and people consumers making decisions online so the way that reviews are actually harnessed in those situations is um it's it's it's integral it's it's it's almost mandatory to any any customer journey in this day and age um and in terms of the actual transparency how that plays about is people are actually using this to make their decisions in this day and age it isn't just a case of okay well are um we were told by uh a dad or an uncle or or Auntie or or anybody to to go and and use this conveyance or it's now a case of okay well let's let's have a look let's see let's see what we can find out about them let's see what their what their business is like and let's see what people have said about them before and from my perspective it's only a good thing it's it's putting so much more power in the hands of the consumer and as businesses if if you aren't really adapting to that then then you're losing out there's so many positives to it that I could I could reel off but um but one of them is is is the business the actual new business that can be gained from it from being transparent and from being from allowing your customers to be your voice and there's no greater um there's no stronger voice in in in in consumer Behavior than than a previous customer actually shouting about how great you are as a as an organization that can influence people and prospective uh prospective clients in the future thank you um we've got another question come in actually Gro which I might come to you again first on which um again I don't I don't have the name of the the questioner but um a general question really about uh what firms can do about bad reviews um you know they can appear anywhere but what can one do about bad reviews um which you know potentially in this sector might have been put up by the other party in a in a dispute um uh so it it's that you know one of the concerns actually I've I've heard put to me a number of times what would be your view on that gra this is a question I get all the time and there there's sort of two answers to this firstly From perspective of of of of trust pilot is that we have terms and conditions that that protect against this so any review that's placed on the site has to be about a genuine experience and if the reviewer cannot prove that they've had a genuine experience then that that uh review can be removed so we do everything in our power to try and uh promote Trust on our website to make sure that we keep genuine reviews on the website but at the same time any reviews that are not genuine will get removed the biggest team that we have here at trust pilot is our our content Integrity team and they try and uphold the platform to the highest of Standards to make sure that we have as many genuine reviews and like I said we get rid of as many um uh sort of fake or false reviews from the platform form the other thing I would say is a negative review it's two there's two ways you can sort of look at a negative review the right way to look at it is is is an opportunity so Roy touched on it earlier in the in the recording of how he responds to a negative review and it's quite interesting in my position I get to see the good and the bad of when it comes to customer service and the bad is people who are led by their their sort of instant reaction when they receive a negative review and and sometimes you get people who who just want to abrasive and fight back whereas in reality it's always best to take a step away and breathe and maybe sleep on it and then come back the day after and actually try and justify what's actually happened in this situation because people are going to read that the most powerful interaction you can have on trust Pilots a platform is the reply to a negative review if you have hypothetically if you have a thousand reviews on trust pilot 999 of them are positive people will will find that one negative review and they don't find it to read the Nega negative review they find it to read how you reacted to it so that's the opportunity that a negative review actually gives an organization it allows you to actually voice your customer service and I always make reference to like killing people with kindness and when somebody is angry and someone leaves a negative review for you the best way to react to it is by trying to understand their perspective and if you can turn a negative into a positive you're going to have a client for life like that that client will then go tell three or four friends and you never know what you're going to get out of that as well so it should be viewed as an opportunity I know it's not always as simple as that but that's the best way to sort of handle a negative review I would say thank thank you um Roy is there anything you'd like to add to that no I very much concur with what grth said I think it's just worthwhile indeed just taking the point that bad reviews do have the potential to damage or anyone's but certainly a law firms reputation and I think as as business owners or as law firms it is important as gr said to consider not just how that might impact you as a firm but more so how your reply can impact other people's perspectives of you as a firm as well so some really key points contact the review website and see if anything can be done about that particular bad review contact the client perhaps as well if it's not Anonymous the review that is and see if any reparations can be made and see if post those reparations that review can be taken down if whatever reason the review websites is enabled to do so depending on their terms and conditions but absolutely respond in an amicable firm but but an amicable way yeah thank you um so I was going to go to another couple of questions that have come through um Jackie I'm sure this one is um hopefully quite a an easy one for you to to pick up please but we've had a a question about where one can get help um in terms of understanding how to comply with the rules um there's quite a lot of guidance on our website already um published so if you just sort of put in SRA transparency rules um into Google then then you'll be fed through to some guidance you can also ring the ethics help line if you have a a more specific query that's not covered by the guidance and then ring the ethics help line and they'll be happy to help great thank you um and so um another question that's come through this one from Susan um and she's talking about um basically when she does uh quote her fees um they're based on you know quite specific circumstances which she outlines before um action is taken and it's a concern about whether it would actually be quite misleading to give general information on a website um uh you know if then you know the circumstances change you know is that actually overall to the detriment of of of customers because it hasn't been precise um Jackie can I come to you uh for your thoughts on that one please yeah definitely so the the point of the transparency rules is to enable consumers who haven't yet approached a firm to get a good idea of what a typical legal service would cost um and so it's not supposed to say your service will cost exactly this and so that's what we ask firms to do and we give some flexibility in saying you can give the average cost you can give an average range of costs you can give your hourly rates and the typical number of hours that it might cost um so anything that gives like consumers a good idea of what a standard service is and most firms do that I'm sorry I'm dodging the sunlight here I don't I don't want to criticize the sunlight coming in through the window it's very welcome in November um but I am just trying to play dodge the Sun so you can see me um but consumers know that it's not that exact cost and there's other rules in the SR a codes that say about the information that you need to give to a client when they actually then come to instruct you and that's where the more detailed information is um and consumers do know about that and that the latest the three-year evaluation and transparency rules found that the majority of customers said that the information given on the website enabled them to to have a good estimate of how much their legal service will cost um and remember that it's also there to help compare firms that's the principal reason that it's there so even if you're giving a typical cost and then firm B and C are given a typical cost what it does is enable consumers to compare which firm is the more expensive which one has the higher quality which one has other services that I like all the sort of attributes that consumers are interested in they can compare and then the exact cost can come later yeah thank you I wondered um Roy do you do you want to end any observations perhaps from your your experience on on on that kind of wider concern about you know the general information perhaps being misleading I can't hear Roy there there we go I suppose I'm in one of those areas of law which is quite kind to me when it comes to the transparency rules and what needs to be made public but I I do share the sentiment in that the reality is a lot of what we do as lawyers can be quite bespoke as far as our costs are concerned so absolutely it makes sense to have a range where possible but that's just getting that person through the door as it were to be able to pick up the phone to have a wider discussion exactly what they want and in as much as possible with the gift of foresight to charge that client appropriately yeah no I think that's that's really helpful thank you um and um just to pick off a further question that's come through again I I don't have a name um but um you know I assume in in the context of um uh kind of online reviews the question is about how can we protect solicitors from um insult and and abuse use by by clients I I wonder grae you know whether perhaps again from a wider perspective whether there's any kind of uh Reflections on on how one guards against that that concern I mean this is this is a genuine concern and again not the first time I've had this voice to me because trust pilot is an open platform so we actually facilitate reviews left by people without really any checks at first uh at first glance however we do have quite string terms and conditions that would protect against this um and those terms and conditions include any abusive language any personal details so those reviews if they are placed against you and and you feel they do breach our terms and conditions it's very easy to report that to us and if we uh if we're in agreement with you that they do contain abusive language or or personal details or or elements that you you may find are abusive then um then yeah we will we can have that review doctored we can have it removed there are lot of different outcomes that can come from that so we do do everything we can as a as a review platform to try and protect you from that the review should be about the service that's being uh that's being offered not anything more than that right that that's really helpful I wanted to reflect upon uh one of the points that's been raised with me quite often and I think it came up at the Compliance Conference as well just in terms of um in particular areas of law and I'm thinking of sensitive areas like family law um where individuals you know clients you know may actually be very happy but um you know may not want any of the detail of their circumstances revealed um whether there are any suggestions around how um people can be encouraged to leave reviews in in those circumstances to kind of help um share information for uh other prospective clients um Roy can I can I ask for your Reflections on on that and I don't know um Jackie and gr whether there's any wider thoughts Roy thank you yes I can I absolutely sympathize with those who are in areas of law where there are tricky or or sensitive circumstances and those do appear as well in employment law too when it comes to still trying to make ambassadors of those clients it's in my view trying to find a way that they can provide a testimonial or a review in a way that they can still for example be anonymized they don't necessarily have to go into the devil of the detail but they can still leave um a review that makes it Anonymous or um indeed if there's some other sort of way that they can provide a starred review for example or some other numerical review that's also helpful and some other law firms that I know have a more sort of less digital way of going about their reviews instead of getting things on paper and then that law firm can upload them onto their onto their system onto their website etc those are ways around that although I do sympathize with um areas of law where it's more sensitive than not thank you um I think we're going to be coming to the end of our our time so Jackie or gr was there anything more you wanted to add on on that point or anything wider the only thing I'd say to that is is is it's quite a skill in terms of how you go about asking for the review so when it when it does when it's about sensitive information you can be quite succinct in in how what sort of questions you ask in in terms of the services that you provided around what feedback you want to get and obviously just making reference to the fact that that that less detail is absolutely fine it's probably going to play into your hands of of of increasing that uh increasing the ability for you to actually receive that review um it doesn't need to be I want to know everything I I want feedback on absolutely everything that we've done for you and and we want all the detail possible you can actually tailor your the actual content in an email to request the review um to make sure that you're being succinct and you are being kind and considerate to the people that you're actually dealing with I suppose I I'd Echo that really and say that the majority of reviews that we see about solicitors are about the customer service not about the legal service itself so a consumer doesn't even need to comment on what it was about or the ins and outs of their situation the mo the most common aspect reviewed is communication with the firm and you can comment on that without without talking about what your legal issue was that's great um well look um I think we're coming to the end of a lot of time so I did want to say thank you um for for all the questions but particularly um say thank you very much to all of our our speakers um uh if if you did have further questions in your mind that you hav't put to us now you know please do do look at our our website please do um if it's appropriate get in touch with the ethics helpline um you'll also find that all of the resources from today's webinar um will be on our our on demand Pages after this um so look I've really um enjoyed the discussion and think it's been a great session but but to be honest we also want to know what what you think um whether the format works well um you know we really open to suggestions for how to improve this going forward um so there's a feedback link um uh below uh our our faces on the screen so um if you could click that and give us some feedback let us know your views we would really appreciate that as well I also want to do a little bit of a plug for the rest of the um virtual uh compliance uh conference sessions there are further sessions being shown this week I just wanted to flag um we did touch on earlier the the um issue of of AI um you may be interested in um there's a session on Innovation tomorrow at 12:15 on Thursday there's a session on uh cyber crime and AI at 12:30 um and the next session up later on today at 2:00 is about our accounts rules so please do um log in and and listen and and take part in those if you're able to um All That Remains for me to do is say thank you again um really looking forward to uh seeing you again soon thank you very much