Clerksroom Chambers was created in 2001 out of a passionate belief that it was time for change at the Bar. It took years for the model to be accepted by both the Bar and the legal industry (particularly the Bar) because ours was the first model to disrupt the traditional way in which the Bar worked. We are a limited company led by Stephen Ward, Managing Director and Co-founder Harry Hodgkin, Barrister and Non-executive Chairman of the Board. We operate a national chambers supported by a full clerking team in Taunton. All barristers work from home, connecting to centrally administered IT, library and support functions.
We have devised new ways in which a chambers can use the internet and digital technology for marketing, attracting new talent and educating the sector. We have now grown to support 80+ barristers, have significant contractual arrangements with the leading legal brands across the UK and are seen as a valuable and professional alternative to the traditional chambers structure. It hasn’t always been easy but our clients and the wider market now fully understand that we have modelled our advocacy business to suit their financial, reporting, legal and growth needs. Not only do we understand their business, we are able to make the investment and management decisions to steer our brand nimbly into their instruction books. While other chambers may lag behind, with barrister-led arguments about who leads a team or how much money should be spent on their practice, we are able to streamline decision-making processes and advance quickly, with an unashamedly commercial agenda, benefitting our barristers along the way and offering clarity, strength, depth and cost-effectiveness to clients.
Clerksroom Direct
Clerksroom Direct, the UK’s largest direct access brand, was launched online on 1 January 2015. 6,000 of the 12,000 strong bar have now undertaken the formal training to work directly with the public. We now work with over 200 chambers and offer total access to the public access bar, offering the largest pool of talent to customers directly. We have not only taken up the gauntlet of entering into this market, we have the resources, ambition and capacity to make it work for our clients – both traditional and new. As you will see, not only have we been able to move swiftly and strategically into this market, we have also lined up core marketing partners and key chambers who have helped us to get the message out there; overcoming one of the biggest challenges for Direct Access – that the Bar is now ready for business, wherever it comes from.
The public access challenge
Public access to barristers directly or through chambers is increasing in popularity. Whilst the rule change goes back to 2004, the market was initially slow to react. This is directly related to the ability of a chambers to fund advertising through traditional or digital channels. It is highly unlikely that a chambers will buy air time on major TV channels in the same way that other law firms seem to be able to do. The reality is that barristers are sole practitioners and need to be clever about getting the message across if the market is to be properly exploited.
There is now a change in the mood and things are quickly beginning to gather momentum. New websites like the Bar Council supported DPA, My Barrister, Shensmith Barristers, Absolute Barristers and Direct Barristers are all helping to raise awareness amongst legal consumers of the simple fact that members of the public can in fact go direct to a barrister and, more often than not, it’s cheaper.
One of the most surprising developments in the last 2 years is that solicitors are now beginning to understand the rules and how they can put them to good use. 30% of our public access business (from the last 2,000 instructions) now comes from solicitors directly. Why? Because solicitors can now work with clients up to the hearing date, pass the files and client onto the Barrister directly and allow the client to work with the Barrister. Not only does this avoid duplication of costs for the hearing where appropriate, it also removes the professional rules and insurance issues for the solicitor being liable for the Barrister’s fees for the final hearing. We are trying to raise awareness that where appropriate, solicitors can use the public access rules to their advantage too.
The role of the clerks
Clerksroom Direct was born out of the total frustration felt by clerks in dealing with the increase in direct access enquiries. It often takes a highly paid clerk an hour or more to discuss with the client how to send papers to a barrister, cover what the client might like to send and gain a clear understanding of the merits of the case and the client’s ability to pay, before a barrister even agrees to accept a direct access case. Clerks didn’t like the emerging direct access process but we had to react to the market and re-invent ourselves – which is what the Bar has been so good at doing in the past.
The result of the hour-long call was that the client would send some papers, a passport and proof of address and the barrister would look at it, offer a quote, sort out the paperwork, prepare the client care letter and then see if the client would like to proceed. Conversion rate at the time was approximately 20 per cent, with many clients simply never coming back. If the process is 1 hour at best, that’s 5 hours work for clerks to get 1 new client, often with a limited budget. It simply does not work for a chambers to do public access work unless you can find a way to streamline the process.
Clerks are not trained sales people; they are not trained to convert the client into a sale. They don’t have the resources to follow up a latent direct access enquiry and it’s not been part of their job remit to do so. Clerks often have great people skills and have a real desire to help people but in a different context to the more modern sales-driven business development roles.
A clerk’s traditional skill set is to be commended but, with public access enquiries, we need to know if a potential client wants to buy the service we offer. Compare the modern sales-push role with the traditional (and let’s face it, fantastic) situation the Bar has enjoyed for years – where pretty much every call from a solicitor with instructions for counsel is converted into a sale – and you see why clerks’ sales skills are generally not conducive for the public access market. Creating an effective proposition, sales strategy and sourcing the right skills requires an understanding of the needs of our marketplace as well as the barriers to conversion for Direct Access. Our approach was to firstly map the process of instructing a Barrister from a client’s perspective, and then incorporate the public access rules, compliance requirements and payment processing systems. We also looked at the problem from the clerk’s point of view and assessed the barristers’ needs and the politics that exist between the barristers, clerks and committees.
Our solution
We soon realised that a number of the stakeholders had competing objectives, the investment required to build a secure online portal to automate the process was considerable (£100k+), and the need to provide telephone support and digital marketing and social media strategy meant the task of building a new system from a clean sheet of paper was huge. With 15 years’ experience of innovation at the Bar, a strong company structure and a team of 23 experienced clerks and staff we were able to put a clear plan together and build our portal. However, it became obvious from the very early days that to build a system of this complexity and cost it needed to be a system for the Bar as a whole, not just our own members. To date, £300,000+ has now been invested in the project.
The outcome is a portal where barristers can add their profile at no cost, their clerks are engaged and copied into communications and issues such as compliance and public access requirements are automated using soft searches (such as digital signatures and email verification). Couple this with automated client care letters and integrated payment processing systems (to PCI level 3) and the portal can thus allow the client, barrister and clerk to be effectively matched to the right enquiry. Clerks and barristers can then communicate with the client, quote fees, automate compliance and accept pre-payment of agreed fees. Over 1,000 barristers from 200+ chambers have now added their detailed profiles to the portal and our conversion rate has increased to 70% over the past 12 months since the system officially launched. Our system has processed 2,500 new instructions in the past 12 months.
Fees
Our open and transparent approach means the fees quoted are clear and clarify the cost of the barrister and the portal fee. Portal fees are used to re-invest into marketing, providing us with a significant budget to spend on Google Ads and Facebook. A substantial part of our learning as we continue down the path of this brave new world has been to test and measure Google Ad spend using the latest online tracking tools, mapping click-throughs to client spend. At that point you gain control over your marketing, allowing you to spend money on Google Ads that produce income and quickly turn off Google Ads that don’t. An exciting part of our development was to integrate Google Analytics directly into our bespoke payment portal, allowing us to see in real time the search terms used on Google, the click through journey to instruction, selection of the barrister, payment and spend. We can literally see that someone searched “Barrister in Birmingham”, the results they were given including our PPC ad, the cost of that spend, the click through to payment and the profit margin generated. i.e. if you spend £1 on a PPC lead and it converts to a £10 spend with 70% success rate, how many times would you want to do that in a day?
Competing with solicitors?
With regards to the age-old argument of Barristers competing directly with solicitors, it’s worth mentioning that Public Access isn’t simply a game of “us v them”. Clerksroom Direct actually works closely with, and to the benefit of, many UK law firms for various reasons and in various circumstances.
We have referred hugely valuable claims to departments as we identify cases that demand an experienced solicitor. This is our regulatory obligation – one we take seriously as it’s in the best interest of the consumer. It’s also a benefit to the many high profile practices we work with. For consumers, it offers more control, greater clarity of fees and wider alternative options to seek resolution to their claim. Our key aim is to avoid duplication where appropriate. Why have a solicitor and Barrister at court if a Barrister working directly with the client is more appropriate and proportionate? Solicitors can also remove their liability to pay Barristers fees if they use the public access rules to instruct a Barrister for the client at court. We do require pre-payment by card but then it’s done.
The Future
We are constantly looking at ways of improving the portal and it’s clear there is much to do to develop the journey for clients and for Barristers but with so many people in the profession now engaged in the process we are confident that we are on the right path.
Like it or not, professionals at the Bar are being marketed directly to the consumer and clients are happy and willing to pay for their legal support, albeit as a small percentage of the overall consumer base at present but with slick marketing campaigns and numerous marketing partners, the fight to deliver professional and value-for-money legal advice to consumers (in the way they want it) is well and truly on. The marketplace is generally accepted to be worth £32bn in England & Wales alone, our mission is to raise awareness that members of the public now have the option to work directly with a barrister if they wish.
The author
Stephen Ward is the founder and managing director of Clerksroom Chambers, Clerksroom Mediation and Clerksroom Direct. Co-founder is Harry Hodgkin, Barrister and Non Executive Chairman of the Board. Email ward@clerksroom.com. Twitter @clerksroom.
Excercise
Was there a need for “something like” Clerksroom Direct and if so, do you think that it has fulfilled that need? Do you think that the several different models of barrister organisations now in place are helpful to barristers – and/or to the public? Do you see any changes likely in your own method of working and how you present yourself to the public?