In 2012, the LSB commissioned a survey of over 4,000 individual consumers who had experienced problems that could have a legal solution to find out how they had handled them.2Available at: https://research.legalservicesboard.org.uk/reports/consumers-unmet-legal-needs/. This research found that only about a fifth of these consumers had used a lawyer to handle their problem. Close to a tenth of respondents used advice agencies such as Citizens Advice or a Law Centre®, while a large proportion used other sources of advice. An eighth took no action with over a third of those interviewed deciding to handle their problem alone.

Given our regulatory objective of ‘improving access to justice’ the LSB was interested in these findings.3See: www.legalservicesboard.org.uk/about_us/index.htm and www.legalservicesboard.org.uk/news_publications/publications/pdf/regulatory_objectives.pdf. Do they indicate that people are not aware of the services available? Why did people make the choices they did? Is the choice not to use lawyers a result of a lack of trust or for a different reason?

To understand more about the drivers for these findings the LSB commissioned Optimisa to carry out a mixture of focus groups and in-depth interviews with a range of people who had experienced legal issues, but responded to them in a variety of different ways.4See: www.optimisaresearch.com/index.php. Consumer use of legal services, Optimisa, 2013, will be available on the LSB website from 5 June: https://research.legalservices board.org.uk.

A particular focus of the research was on the extent to which trust acted as a driver of consumer choices in whether or not to use the legal profession (in particular, given market concentration, solicitors).

There was a fair degree of consistency in the approaches taken by those interviewed in our study. Consumers appear to be taking reasoned and, some might argue, rational decisions on whether to ignore problems, handle them themselves or approach someone for formal legal advice. Figure 1 summarises the drivers for consumers’ choices about whether or not to use formal legal advice.

When asked to describe their views of legal professionals, commonly used terms included ‘knowledgeable’, ‘professional’, ‘qualified’ and ‘intelligent’. These terms were shared by both those consumers who had used the services of the legal profession and those who had not. The professional ‘brand’ of solicitor in particular remains strong. Equally, though, many other, less favourable terms were used to describe views of legal professionals (see Figure 2).

Lawyers (here meaning all types of regulated professional) were seen by those interviewed as being able to have a larger impact on the outcome of any issue faced as a result of their training and status and so were the ‘go-to’ people for legal problems where significant issues were at stake.

This, though, was perceived as having a potentially negative impact. While on the one hand it might lead to the early conclusion of a legal problem, on the other hand there existed a fear that involving legal professionals would undermine necessary relationships beyond the conclusion of the problem or dispute.

For many, the fear of legal professionals contaminating relationships led to the ghettoisation of legal solutions into a small band of common practice areas. In these areas, such as conveyancing, divorce and road traffic accidents, without hesitation legal professionals were the first option chosen by consumers. However, outside these common areas, legal professionals were often avoided.

Where legal professionals were not approached, there was a division between the type of problems where alternative forms of formal advice were taken, for example, neighbour noise, debt employment, and those problems that were resolved alone or solved using informal advice, for example, discrimination, separation and consumer goods.

Decisions on which route to take to resolve a problem will of course be influenced by the availability of services, the cost of available services and trust in the routes to resolution available.

Figure 3 summarises the influences or drivers of trust found in our research. It is important to note that, depending on experience, all these potential drivers could act either as a positive or a negative driver to consumers’ trust in legal services.

A positive individual experience of good service or a good outcome can lead to a long-term trusted relationship developing with a particular provider or group of providers (for example, solicitors). Indeed many consumers tended to put such a trusted relationship with an individual supplier above the importance of seeking a provider with specialist experience or qualifications.

As the words used to describe legal professionals in Figure 2 highlighted, when considering the profession as a whole, consumers trust in the competence and professionalism of legal professionals. This appeared in our research to be driven both by experience and a wider inbuilt trust in the profession.

Where consumers exhibited a sense of mistrust, however, this was shaped not by a single incident, but by multiple incidents and underlying perceptions of the profession. Trust was particularly undermined by experiences and perceptions of the service provided; cost; and the transparency of cost.

Where consumers perceived that they had a choice in which course of action to take (though in practice choices may be available even where consumers were unaware of having a choice), the drivers for a lack of trust did tend to undermine their willingness to use legal professionals and drove them to seek alternative formal or informal solutions.

Good service was described as being kept informed, cost and timings staying broadly in line with expectations, accessibility of ongoing help during the process and a willingness of the provider to explain what was happening without using jargon. Being treated like a number not a person or that the professional had failed to empathise with their situation were the most negative examples of service expressed. Consumers were concerned that a failure to understand their wider needs, including maintaining relationships with those involved in the legal dispute, would undermine the effectiveness of the solutions provided by legal professionals. These concerns directly contributed towards the choices made by individuals to use less confrontational methods to resolve legal problems. This demonstrates a further failure of communication of the skills available and range of services offered by legal professionals, including mediation.

The concern for professionals must be that for many services that they consider themselves well-placed to offer, consumers choose to look elsewhere because they do not trust legal professionals to deliver what they need. Services relating to neighbourhood disputes, consumer and contract disputes, debt, many wills, planning etc are all carried out by other providers or can be done by consumers themselves.

While it might be argued that these do not form part of the traditional core of work undertaken by, for example, solicitors’ firms, there is no reason that they could not be and indeed legal professionals may argue that they are best placed to offer these services. Certainly many new entrants to the legal market see some of these areas of work as core to their consumer offer. Furthermore, with the decline in the conveyancing market in recent years, cuts in legal aid funding and the increased size of the unregulated legal profession, such as in the will-writing market, legal professionals will have to expand into new areas of work to maintain turnover and profitability. They may also see new entrants use these areas of work as a launch pad into more traditional lawyer-like services that are often the reserve of traditional firms.

At the same time, many of the existing alternative sources of formal advice (such as third sector and local authorities) are seeing reductions in their funding. While this presents concerns for regulators over continuing access to justice, it also presents opportunities for any providers who can provide low-cost, clearly defined, trusted services to enter the market. The low take-up of technology to increase supply and reduce cost is a striking feature of the traditional legal and advice sector, just as the heightened use of technology features among new entrants.

Our research has helped improve our understanding of the drivers for consumer behaviour. It has confirmed to us the high standing in which the legal profession is held, but also that this standing is undermined by a persistent failure to communicate clearly the service offered and its cost.

When consumers make their choices on how to address the problems they face, they appear to divide their problems into those where a lawyer is the obvious and immediate choice and those where they seek to avoid using lawyers. Simple changes to the transparency of service provision and costs could substantially address many of the barriers consumers perceive in engaging professional legal advice, helping increase access to justice and leading to greater satisfaction with the legal profession.