We are known for repeatedly stating our view that in many respects personal injury practices are light years ahead of most other categories of lawyers and law firms.

We say this because most personal injury practices realised years ago the fundamental shift between a professional practice and a business service. These practices are run more as businesses, with the recognition, rightly or wrongly, that outside of some niche areas in business law, possibly divorce and a few other areas, clients and potential clients see lawyers as largely bland and the same, providers of a service which they expect to be competent but also don’t see the real value in.

The “punter” may well be wrong about the above, but this is largely irrelevant. What has happened is that most personal injury practices have followed the money and realised that the real fight between them has been about marketing. Most general legal practices have failed completely to even comprehend the need for real investment in marketing, and it’s probably now too late. They have ceded this to Quality Solicitors, Contact law and many others by actually creating the buying power which will price them out of the market.

But in one respect are personal injury lawyers now missing a fundamental point. Have they gone too far in seeing law simply as a commodity ?

Legal services are fundamentally about trust  and people buy people. There can be few more important things than needing a lawyer for advice, whether it’s about divorce, wills, probate, a business dispute or a personal injury. There is now a lot of mistrust of lawyers generally and personal injury lawyers in particular. So, if a firm goes out of it’s way to create trust, might this create an advantage for that firm ?

So few personal injury lawyers have any of their people on their websites – the people who actually deal with claims are anonymous on many sites. Why is this ? Maybe because many staff are junior and possibly even not qualified ? It certainly doesn’t help trust. At the end of the day, people now want to know who they are dealing with.

So, personal injury firms that recognise this and play on it may gain an advantage, and one such firm, Lloyd Green, have certainly recognised it. Each of their fee earners has their own profile page, so a prospective client can see exactly who they are dealing with, in the same way as with many small general practice firms, who in this sense are maybe one step ahead ?

What do you think ?