Price Cutting

In an article entitled ‘Stack “em high” in the Solicitors Journal of 4 May, Christopher Stoakes wrote that client satisfaction research shows time and time again that price comes low down on a list of key factors when assessing a lawyer’s service. When clients do question price it is usually symptomatic of dissatisfaction with some other aspect of the service, not a quibble with the value of the service per se. Although prospective clients will shop around for some types of work, asking a number of firms for a quote, this does not mean they will accept the cheapest. On the other hand, prospective clients react badly to the reluctance of a lawyer to provide any overall idea of costs; it smacks of lack of experience if they can’t even give a ball-park figure. Part of the problem is that lawyers seem to have no real sense that what they provide is at all valuable. Talk to a lawyer about a prospective piece of work and before you know it he’s offering you a discount, a fixed price or some other special offer. If you are offering a discount from the start the implication is that your usual rate is a rip-off or that you really need the business, neither of which inspires confidence. The old method of weighing the file had much to commend it in the days when clients were not entitled (in lawyers’ eyes) to what we now rightly regard as basic information such as “how much will I have to pay and why?”. But the retreat to the chargeable hour, then discounts from it and fixed prices based on a bodge of chargeable hours, miss the point that clients pay for what they consider valuable, not just the time involved (which doesn’t even approximate to the costs of production). He concluded: “I’m not going to shop around for the cheapest; I’m going to buy the lawyer who understands my concerns. I don’t expect him to be the cheapest. Nor do I expect his price to be completely out of line. Clients, for too long, have had to put up with both”.