Epoq.co.uk Legal Services News

What does your website offer your clients?. Stock photos and contact details?, or a fully engaging online legal platform where they can learn about, draft and purchase legal services from you?

With modern consumers growing to consider online delivery of services the norm, what is your firm doing to embrace and profit from this new culture, what is your client-web-strategy? We take a look at what members of the MyLawyer network can offer their clients, most specifically the new “try before you buy” technology that comes with the latest generation of Rapidocs technology.

When a potential or existing client lands on your MyLawyer website they have instant access to a full law guide that explains the area surrounding their matter, and introduces the range of documents that may be of help to them. The client is presented with clear, upfront pricing and is able to start drafting the document without having to commit so much as an email address.

The drafting process involves an intelligent online interview system where (although partially obscured and not printable) the document can be seen to evolve in real time as answers are provided and the client’s situation becomes clear. A draft can then be saved to a personalised section of your website and returned to at any point to be edited further and purchased when complete. At this point the document is passed to the firm itself for legal review, if appropriate.

So how does all this make the user feel, and what does it mean for you? Well, our feedback suggests that users remain in their comfort zone and don’t feel the pressure that may be exerted by a face-to-face interaction. Perhaps most significantly, it is the transparency of the process that enables both potential and existing clients to see the value of what is being sold and builds a degree of trust before having to make any sort of commitment whatsoever, and the overriding emotion that users feedback is one of control;

“From start to finish I felt in control: I found the right documents and read some background info which helped put my mind at rest, and being able to fully preview them before committing to purchase was a nice touch. All in all I found the process transparent and reassuring, and came out with the documentation I needed without sacrificing quality and whilst saving substantially from the price I would have paid on the high-street”

M Noar, Libra Solutions, online business services.

The modern consumer banks online, buys their insurance online, pays their bills online, and yet the market for online legal services is still relatively immature. Is it time your website became more than just an e-brochure for your legal services?, is it time it became a portal for successful web-engagement 24/7?

Our research suggests that firms joining the MyLawyer network are set to benefit from substantially reduced drafting costs and increase firm-wide margins just from servicing their existing client base.

MyLawyer firms will be able to provide online drafting services to clients from their own website, will receive pre-drafted referrals from MyLawyer.co.uk, and will have access to Rapidocs V4 technology for in-house drafting use, making cost savings across all three channels.

“Our detailed and law-firm supported research suggests that MyLawyer members will be able to save money in 4 key ways”, explains Business Development Director, Dave Jones:

a)    Firstly, the cost of drafting a document virtually disappears if the client chooses to create the draft themselves online.

b)    Secondly, clients can engage with the firm by telephone, with less qualified (and hence cheaper to employ) specifically-trained operators using Rapidocs technology to draft the document in house.

c)    Thirdly, in-house face-to-face interviews can be performed by less qualified staff that have a lower hourly rate.

d)    Finally, even when a face-to-face interview is conducted by the fee-earner themselves, time and money are still saved as at the end of the interview the document has been automatically drafted, whereas traditionally they would need a separate ‘write up period’.

On top of these savings, admin overheads can be reduced: a proportion of the clients who engage with any firm invariably do not complete their engagement – but if these clients can be directed online for the first draft, these lost transactions do not take up valuable staff time. Additionally, electronic billing means that the need for staff to chase invoices is reduced.

The latest Rapidocs technology means firms are able to service their existing client-base much more efficiently: in fact through both online and in-house drafting we believe some firms will be able to cut their direct cost of fulfilment by as much as 50%. Even if only 30% of their existing customers engage online we still forecast a 10% rise in the overall margins of the firm. This is a staggering statistic when you consider that this model doesn’t take into account any new business generated as a result of the new online capabilities MyLawyer firms will enjoy.

Making accurate predictions of resulting new business is not easy, but by being among the first firms to truly embrace the web and hence give the modern legal consumer what they want, the sky’s the limit.
There is limited space for top-tier firms to join the MyLawyer network.

This week sees the launch of two new documents into the Rapidocs library, a ‘change of name deed for a minor’ and a ‘limited liability partnership agreement’.

A recent news article highlighted a number of pending court cases in New Zealand where children are fighting for the right to change their names having been graced with names such as Sex Fruit, Number 16 Bus Shelter, O.Crnia and Midnight Chardonnay. Despite such a bizarre trend in the UK, changing the name of a minor is still a common occurrence, for a variety of reasons. Our change of name deed for a minor makes it easy to change the name of a child, provided that you have parental responsibility for that child and any other person who also has parental responsibility gives consent to the change of name. This document is only suitable for minors (i.e. under the age of 18 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and under the age of 16 in Scotland) and British citizens. Children over the age of 16 will also need to give consent to the change of name by signing in both his/her new and old name.

A limited liability partnership has elements of both a partnership and a corporation, and is a unique entity in its synthesis of both collective and individual rights and responsibilities, while being a particularly flexible business structure. This document creates a limited liability partnership agreement (LLP) in accordance with the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 and provides a contractual framework under which the members should conduct themselves at all times. The agreement includes provisions in relation to the key elements that define an LLP such as management, finances and member regulation. In addition, the agreement offers many optional clauses such as those in relation to insurance, maternity, paternity and adoption leave. This document is suitable for small to medium sized limited liability partnerships of no more than 20 members. Please note that this can only be used for LLPs consisting of individual members, and not companies or other LLPs.

Both of these documents are now part of the Rapidocs library, and available for our customers to access.

As part of our continual drive to both improve and augment the range of document services we offer through our platform, we are pleased to announce the addition of a new range of landlord services to our legal content range.

It is vital that landlords are aware of the correct course of action in the event that a tenant(s) needs to be evicted, as taking the law into your own hands can land them with a heavy fine or even a prison sentence. Our new service is designed to guide customers safely through the potential minefield of being a landlord in England and Wales, making sure you tick all the procedural boxes along the way.

The new services cover everything a landlord needs to legally evict a tenant and regain possession of their property: although there are many reasons to evict a tenant(s), the two most commonly used grounds are rent arrears and the accelerated possession procedure, the latter being the preferred way to remove existing tenants and replace them with new ones paying rent.

These new services can be found across Epoq’s own sites and are available to all of our clients.

For small law firms in the US, increasing pricing pressure and the emergence of well funded and widely marketed non-lawyer legal document preparation services (e.g. Legalzoom) have made the need for alternative, lower cost methods of servicing existing customers and gaining new ones an acute issue.

To competitively service this market, small law firms need to find ways of reducing the cost of service, whilst simultaneously satisfying customers’ demand for on-line legal services where they can self-serve. Organisations such as insurers are also looking for ways of enhancing their products with access to self-serve legal services.

The Epoq USA legal platform is already ideally positioned to meet all these needs - but an additional challenging aspect of providing commoditized legal services in the U.S lies in creating a system and services/products that are compliant with individual local bar regulations for the Unauthorized Practice of Law (“UPL”).

UPL regulations dictate that legal advice can only be offered by an attorney registered in the same State as the client, and that an attorney may not offer legal advice in any other State. As a result, Epoq has had to ensure that all aspects of a self service solution- such as communications with customers, including the delivery systems - are fully compliant: it has been challenging to deal with individual bar regulations concerning, for example, the sharing of revenue, on-line engagement with clients and facilitating on-line payments in order to ensure that services provided on the Epoq Legal platform are compliant across the US.

For US law firms, the Epoq platform provides a simple, risk-free way of reducing the cost to serve and reaching new markets that:

• Is fully compliant with local bar UPL regulations;
• Is capable of providing a ‘virtual shop front’ that is dedicated to their firm;
• Is scalable, with selectable content modules to match the firm’s own legal expertise;
• Provides immediately available mechanisms for ecommerce and online client communication and management

We are delighted to announce that Minister Law Ltd are the fourth firm to join the online MyLawyer network, launching later this year. Minster will now join the other announced network members (Pannone, Hugh James and Nelsons) in being able to provide their clients with a full range of automated document-drafting services from a dedicated section of their own website, as well as receiving referrals from the consumer-facing MyLawyer.co.uk site.

“At Minster Law we pride ourselves on creating access to legal services for our customers. Our corporate values of People, Value and Growth underpin this approach, and we firmly believe that the MyLawyer network (and the wider services that Epoq are able to provide us) will help enforce our commitment to these values” comments Craig Underwood, Associate Director of Minster Law Ltd.  “As a leading law firm in the UK, we understand how daunting it can be to put your legal affairs in order - and this service demonstrates our aim to de-mystify the law, provide easy access to the legal sector and create value-for-money legal products. Our partnership with Epoq sets the standard for all law firms in the coming decades, and we are proud to be leading the way. Through the network, our customers will have access to the same specialist lawyers and advice that they would have through more traditional engagement, but at far better value and when it’s convenient for them to do so. They will also gain access to additional services that are contracted entirely through the internet.”

Interested in MyLawyer, either as a potential customer or as a network member? Why not have a look at our pre-launch homepage here to see more details…

A staggering report recently revealed that over 2 million couples living together in England and Wales have very few legal rights as unmarried cohabitants in the event of the  relationship coming to an end.

Over half of a sample of cohabiting couples believed that “common law marriage” was a recognised legal status and would allow their partner to inheritance rights should anything happen to them. There is in fact “no such thing in court” and hasn’t been since 1753, and without an up-to-date will partners could potentially be left penniless in the event of death. On top of this, 1 in 4 children are born into unmarried households, so the implications of being legally unprotected extend beyond the couple themselves!
And it’s not just death that could threaten the right to assets; if a cohabiting couple end their relationship and one partner does not have a financial stake in the property, they may have no right to it whatsoever, irrelevant of how long they’ve lived there, and irrelevant of mutual children.
Despite a report by the Law Commission in 2006 which suggested giving cohabiters legal rights similar to married couples, nothing seems set to change and it remains paramount for cohabiting couples to protect their legal rights with appropriate documentation.
Epoq offers a range of legal documentation relevant to cohabiting couples, including:

Comprehensive pair of wills for an unmarried couple

Prenuptial/Pre-civil partnership agreement

Cohabitation agreement

We are currently coming to the end of the latest development cycle for the client side of Rapidocs, which we have moved up a whole version to 4, that’s because it’s such a substantial departure from our previous version, indeed I believe we have made a leap in transparency and accessibility, one that will have a positive repercussion in the market.

As part of this process it became clear that a number of aspects of this development may be unique enough to warrant a patent, so we are seeking the same.

Now, we were originally just seeking patents outside the UK, but in a recent case the High Court said that the Patent Office was incorrectly applying the law in automatically rejecting claims for computer programs, this was in a case brought by four small British businesses. This means there is a greater chance that software patents can be achieved in the UK.

I naturally cannot say too much right now about the patents we are seeking. What I can tell you is that it’s been a long time since I last applied for a patent and had forgotten the embellished language used, the law is without doubt filled with obscure and esoteric terminology. I suppose one of Epoq’s values is to remove the obscure, then simplify the language as much as possible thus making it accessible. However, I suspect that patents are not an area we will be putting our automation hand to any time soon.

For those of you that do not know, the Government passed The Legal Services Act in 2007, this is a major piece of legislation that is set to have a huge effect on the legal landscape.

Over the next 18 months, the scope of these changes are going forever alter the way consumers perceive and access legal services.

An in depth new report was recently published by Intendance Research in conjunction with LPA Legal Recruitment and Thomson Sweet & Maxwell, that (unsurprisingly to us) predicts the Legal Services Act will cause major upheaval in the legal profession.

The survey found that 58% of solicitors and 41% of barristers now think that high street law firms will be “drastically” affected by the reforms. According to 60% of solicitors surveyed, high street law firms will be a “rarity” by 2015.

The intro on their site goes on to say “By allowing non-lawyers to own law firms, the LSA exposes high street firms to competition from all-comers, especially those with well-established brands, hence the coining of the term ‘Tesco Law’ to describe its wide-reaching influence. With their superior media exposure, IT capabilities, and existing retail muscle, supermarkets, among others, could grab a major slice of the market.”

To see more about this report and some tasty snippets visit Brave New World report website.

You can also read more detail in their PDF overview Brave New World report overview -PDF.

One of our services gets a mention in it downloadable PDF and the survey anticipates that some law firms will find a way to compete in this market place with the adoption of the right IT, this was predicted prior to our MyLawyer offering (which is still in stealth mode), I’ll talk more about that in another post.

Epoq (www.epoq.co.uk) the award winning legal services company, today announced the launch of Halifax Legal Solutions (www.halifaxlegalsolutions.co.uk), a brand new comprehensive and affordable legal service, developed specifically for customers of The Halifax.

According to a recent Which? survey 63% of consumers would like access to legal services via their high street bank or supermarket.

Epoq’s £10 million investment in consumer friendly legal technology gives customers precisely that, with unlimited access to legal services either online or via a dedicated telephone line, all linked to a team of solicitors, barristers and other qualified professionals.

With the UK market for consumer legal services estimated at £8 billion* and the forthcoming introduction of the Legal Services Bill, instigating the most significant change to the legal market for over 100 years, it’s no surprise that financial institutions such as The Halifax are taking their first major steps in legal service delivery.

For an annual membership fee of only £89.00 customers using the Halifax Legal Solutions will receive:

· 24 hour legal advice helpline

· Will preparation and updates

· Qualified legal professionals to review and approve all documents prepared using the service

· ID theft resolution service

· Searchable web-based law guide

· Discounted conveyancing

Richard Cohen, Solicitor and Joint CEO of the Epoq Group said “I believe that we are now entering a new era of accessibility and value for consumer and small business legal services. Our clever document technology combined with internet delivery and call centres will keep the quality of service high but costs low.

Halifax has recognised this and their customers will benefit.” Indeed Halifax, Nationwide and the AA are seen as the brands that consumers are most likely to trust to buy legal services from.**

Legal advice, ID theft resolution and Will preparation will be provided over the telephone. In addition over 150 legal documents, such as tenancy agreements, powers of attorney and letters of complaint can be instantly prepared online

following a sophisticated step-by-step system. Once the customer has prepared their legal document it can then be reviewed by the qualified legal team, if required.

*Department for Constitutional Affairs

**Research by Finnacord in association with IMRS

Notes to editors

Epoq Group

Since 1994 Epoq (www.epoq.co.uk) has been developing new and innovative legal solutions; we are a trusted provider to many of the worlds leading financial institutions and now provide intelligent legal document services to over 1 million of their customers.

Epoq has invested over £10 million in technologies and relationships to fully manage the delivery of legal services, we have developed over 200 individual award winning solutions (including Wills, Divorce and Employment), and work with our network of highly respected legal call centres in the UK.

Coinciding with radical changes in the legal services industry, Epoq’s legal solutions have reached maturity at a critical time. In the UK, proposed regulatory changes (under theClementi Review and The Legal Services Bill) are driving many organisations to offer legal services directly to the public and business community.

Epoq’s clients include Royal & Sun Alliance MORE TH>N, ARAG Insurance Capita Insurance Services and Thomson Legal & Regulatory. Epoq is also well known for its direct Web services including Desktop Lawyer (www.desktoplawyer.co.uk).

Rapidocs

Epoq has achieved high levels of standardisation and accessibility by developing Rapidocs®

document and form automation technology (www.rapidocs.com), which is now in its third generation. Rapidocs is fast becoming an industry standard having been adopted by leading international legal publishers, corporate legal departments and even our competitors.

Rapidocs is a sophisticated software solution that follows an advanced question and answer ‘advice’ session leading to the creation of tailored legal documents or PDF forms. Rapidocs documents and forms are designed to be published for use on the Web, CD ROM or through Call Centres.