London firm offers divorce vouchers for Christmas
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London firm Lloyd Platt & Company is offering divorce gift vouchers to entice clients.
According to the firm, Lloyd Platt & Company will issue gift vouchers for half an hour and an hour of legal advice through its website or by post after claiming to have been “inundated” by requests from clients.
A press release states that the idea for the “gift of the year” came after a client’s relative said that they wished to make a contribution towards the client’s divorce, and senior partner Vanessa Lloyd Platt suggested that she provide a gift voucher, to ‘soften’ the fact that the relative was making such a contribution.
Lloyd Platt stated that those now requesting the vouchers include husbands and wives who have said: “this is an ideal way that they can finally broach the subject that they no longer wish to be in the marriage.”
As well as “mistresses enquiring as to the amounts that they can pay and vouchers that they can buy for their lovers, to finally get on with the promise of divorcing their wives.”
And while Lloyd Platt has also stated that, “some have commented that this is a ‘blinder’ of a present and very different from the normal electronic gadgets they were envisaging”, other family lawyers are less enthusiastic.
Joint head of Mills & Reeve’s national family law team Roger Bamber said: “It’s an interesting publicity angle. A lot of firms do free first interviews, which is what this essentially sounds like, but anything that trivialises divorce or gets people to think about divorce in a superficial way is unhelpful.”
“When you are dealing with children’s lives and managing transition it’s not good and we won’t be running out to copy them. It’s fine if you’re selling glasses but this is about children’s lives. Even if I was a client it wouldn’t be for me and as a professional it’s not for me either.”
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Readers' comments (23)
Anonymous | 16-Dec-2009 3:12 pm
Stuck for a gift for your husband/wife this Christmas? Instead of giving them Jamie Oliver's 'Cooking for geezers' wrapped in years of burning resentment, buy them divorce vouchers.
Happy Christmas darling...
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Britomart | 16-Dec-2009 3:32 pm
Is this an early April's Fool?
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Pucka | 16-Dec-2009 4:19 pm
No, Anonymous really is suggesting the vouchers instead of the Jamie Oliver book, I think.
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Firenbrimstone | 16-Dec-2009 4:38 pm
Ha! Finally it outs...Divorce lawyers have long tried to con the public that they are some maligned species of angel, helping unhappy couples to a mutually-agreeable solution...whereas, as practically anyone who has been through a 'normal' divorce (ie one not involving squillions, where a bill the size of a planet is disguised in a 'win' of millions) knows only too well, divorce lawyers delight in squeezing every last penny out of both parties, stoking personal anguish to achieve greater billable hours. They have no incentive but to make divorce as bitter, lengthy and arduous as possible.
Lloyd Platt's witless publicity stunt has indeed bought her publicity, but let's hope the next time she 'graces' the couch on BBC Breakfast blathering about mediation, some clever spark will remind her of this odious scheme.
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Rural bliss | 16-Dec-2009 4:50 pm
This stinks. It's not even funny, just a desperately sad and sordid publicity stunt.
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Anonymous | 16-Dec-2009 5:07 pm
Check the website - enough said.
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Dayglo Dave | 16-Dec-2009 5:09 pm
Cheap stunt. A quick look at the website confirms this. Big on trashy self-publicity. Very short on class.
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PreesR | 16-Dec-2009 7:15 pm
Christmas is probably the right time to hand them out , just when the stress factor is at 99 on Christmas Day but the vouchers should come with72 cooling off period, also are refunds available just in case , you know the marraige for unforessen reasons is patched up .. ? seriously How tacky can you get ? I'd sooner pick potatoes . I don't think solictors know anything about marketing, frankly
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Ashley Balls | 16-Dec-2009 8:35 pm
A stunt - yes. But a quick squizz at the site reveals some quite horrible statistics in terms of fee earner to support staff ratios. More work (or fewer support) appear to be essential.
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Samuel Pink | 17-Dec-2009 5:07 am
I wonder if Loud Pratt will regret “some have commented that this is a ‘blinder’ of a present and very different from the normal electronic gadgets they were envisaging”,
Apart from being so desperately try-hard to use 'blinder', even in a quote, Loud Pratt might consider that Wilde's view that 'not being talked about is the only thing worse than being talked about' is not necessarily true, luv.
Own goal? I think so.
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