QualitySolicitors to put desks in 500 WHSmith branches
WHSmith has agreed a deal to allow QualitySolicitors to place representatives in up to 500 of it branches.
Craig Holt
Initially the lawyers will be based in 150 shops, with the long-term aim of having representatives in 500 stores.
QualitySolicitors was launched as an online legal alliance in 2008, but has since evolved into a high street legal alliance. For an annual fee firms sit on a panel that allows them to pool resources to market services.
The deal with WHSmith is the latest move in the company’s expansion. Under the terms of the deal QualitySolicitors will open a ‘legal access point’ in each of the WHSmith stores and will staff it from a local branch of the alliance.
Solicitors will offer advice on a range of consumer legal matters including conveyancing and will writing. There will also be a television advertising campaign to promote the product.
The alliance is the brainchild of barrister Craig Holt and was launched with the support of Michael Gradon, a former Slaughter and May solicitor and one-time head of legal and commercial at P&O Group.
Holt’s original plan was to have a network of 500 firms signed up to the alliance ahead of the implementation of the Legal Services Act in October. He told The Lawyer in February 2009 that that would give it the economies of scale to compete with new entrants to the profession.
So far the company’s branding is featured on 170 high street firms, with further openings planned.
In October last year Holt told The Lawyer he was in talks with several top 100 firms that are considering signing up to the franchise (7 October 2010).
Holt was unavailable for comment.
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Readers' comments (32)
IHateBPP | 7-Apr-2011 12:59 pm
Not sure about all the firms on that list but I know of at least two that should be using the banned "Inexperience, Unsupervised, Untrained Paralegals" rather than claiming solicitors will be anywhere near the cases.
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Anon | 7-Apr-2011 1:56 pm
Give it 10 years and there wlll be four or five national firms which dominate the market nationwide.
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Anonymous | 7-Apr-2011 3:53 pm
So they were in talks with four top 100 firms in October 2010, but six months on nothing has been agreed...
Did they mean top 100 stationery firms?
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MatthewP | 7-Apr-2011 3:53 pm
People said that it would be the end of the banks, when Sainsbury et al moved into the market.
There will always be a market for the solicitors, but how quality solicitors thinks that by 'cuddeling up' to WH Smith is going to bring anything more than a trumped-up secretary giving advice behind the desk in the shop; that she's read on the flyers the week she started.
Quality this is not the path you should be going down.
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Karl Lavery | 7-Apr-2011 4:00 pm
I remember the dim and distant days when we in the FS world would have stands in garden centres and at agricultural shows and solicitors would walk past and look down on us.
It is an OK way of getting ad hoc, low to modest value transactional business but itis a pretty down market and soul destroying way to work.
Hey Ho, needs as must I suppose!
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Rural bliss | 7-Apr-2011 4:19 pm
"It is an OK way of getting ad hoc, low to modest value transactional business ..."
If only! No client one would want to have is going to be recruited via W H Smith.
For a start, the decent middle class type of client would be too embarrassed at the possibility of being seen in public taking `legal' advice, fearing that a neighbour would see them and asume they were discussing divorce proceedings.
No, the only type of client likely to be obtained is either the loony, with the carrier bag full of evidence that the government is spying on them through their TV or the client that in more generous times would have been eligible for legal aid, but can no way afford private client fees.
In any case, any firm that needs to use the word `Quality' is almost by definition crap. It's like a car salesman calling himself `Honest Harry' - if you need to say you're honest it's because you aren't.
Oh, and what hapened to those `several top 100 firms' that were due to sign up?
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weekend lawyer | 7-Apr-2011 4:42 pm
Apparently they are going to be there on saturdays too. It will be like when you come out of B&Q trying to sell you a conservatory you don't want so you rush out mumbling "no thanks"
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Anonymous | 7-Apr-2011 5:16 pm
It maybe more appropriate for them to teamup with a company such as specsavers.Although the y will need to have the desk near the entrance to get the clients on the way in rather than on the way out !
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Anonymous | 7-Apr-2011 5:34 pm
Will the Quality Lawyers also be trained to offer their clients a totally random chocolate bar or 6 packs of chewing gum for a £?
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Matthew Parkinson | 7-Apr-2011 5:37 pm
What happens when a franchise has already opened [Moorish - Bradford], and then WH Smith nearby puts it's desk in with advertising, flyers and the 'dolly bird' who once worked in a solicitors office as a cleaner ...
I think there will be some pretty miffed partners in firms already operating as Quality, Craig Holt I think you will bring on a 'tsunami' of complaints from your original 'converts' which may well in future damage fatally your business plan ...which was good.
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