QualitySolicitors, the firm everyone loves to hate, has admitted it ‘grew too quickly’. I can hear the crowing as I type, lots of ‘I told you so’ and ‘it was only a matter of time’. The pink chickens have, many would like to believe, definitely come home to roost, leaving QS looking decidedly forlorn and ready for plucking.
I suspect not quite. For a start, their not-so-new boss, Eddie Ross, seems to know his onions. He certainly knows a lot more about branding than any of the naysayers who have leant their (mostly anonymous) pearls of wisdom to the comments on the Law Gazette’s interview with him this week. And he does a good job of getting to the pIoint ‘It is not about turning you into super-rich lawyers. It is about offering a better service than your competitors next door’.
QS did grow too far too fast and promised too much too soon. However, it is arguable that if it hadn’t we wouldn’t even be talking about it because it would have disappeared without a trace before you could say ‘Amanda Holden’. Nothing like putting a few people’s noses out of joint if you want to make a bigger splash than you deserve.
I don’t like the pink, I’m not mad about the name, and I thought urging us to love lawyers was definitely a step to far. But I liked the ‘Hard Road to Travel’ advert, even though it was probably something The Law Society should have made rather than QS. Being all John Lewis about legal services will really only work if, well, if you are John Lewis, but there’s no shame in trying. I’m quite sure nothing bad could ever happen in John Lewis, which strikes me as rather a good feeling for a law firm to emulate.
I was never quite sure whether people were disparaging about the now defunct WH Smith tie-up because they hated the idea or just the fact it was with a chain of shops that have been selling DIY will packs for decades. I still don’t see what is wrong with the idea of having legal information and advice available in shopping centres, even if having fixed points in a glorified newsagents is not the best way to do it.
These assumed failures do not mean the whole QS venture was all mouth and no trousers. It may not have invented Saturday opening or the concept of fixed fees, but QS helped to normalise them in a sector where for too long services had been offered for the convenience of the professionals rather than those paying their salaries, the customers.
The recent launch of its online customer platform may not be a headline grabber, but it should help member firms to do what QS set out to do in the first place, make legal services more convenient, approachable and affordable for whole swathes of consumers who are put off by the high costs and labour intensive nature that still pervades much of the legal market.
Equally, with the likes of Irwin Mitchell and Slater & Gordon continuing to pursue world domination (and who would bet against them?) QS is an alternative for good local firms to compete, keeping their own identity but taking advantage of the opportunities, including branding, that QS provides.
QualitySolicitors would not be the first trailblazer to make the running then shuffle back quietly into the pack. Anyone else looking to make a splash in this market should thank QS for taking all the flack while they could quietly go about their business.
It is also worth remembering that it is only by getting things wrong that you learn how to get them right (although this does not, apparently, apply to the current ‘Lord’ Chancellor). Which suggests that even if QS is not getting any bigger just now, it’s probably getting better. Shame the same can’t be said for everyone.
