Tesco Law…those two words
Nostalgically I was thinking about my first (proper) job the other day. I worked at a major provincial stockbrokers in the north of England on their dealing desk. Hard as this may be to believe I used to sit there until a partner walked through, gave me a completed form, (which I had to check was completed correctly), ring our office in London, place the deal then return one copy to the partner, one to our accounts department and one for my file. Staggering eh? But that was the world we lived in and we were happy. I grew playing on safe streets, with a couple of TV channels, the Sunday roast was carried over to Monday and the news was always at 9 o’clock. How things have changed.
Technology does that though, not just now but always. Today’s internet driven application feast is yesterdays aeroplane or car. They all had impact and just because we take them completely for granted now doesn’t mean that they were never ‘new and dangerous.’
I remember being in my home town, Newcastle, a few years ago and was walking up Grey Street, one of England’s finest, in admiration. Read the local newspapers at the time of it’s construction and you will find reports that John Dobson’s architecture raised many a dismissive eyebrow.
Like it or not we have to accept change and it is far better to flow with it and be in some semblance of control than fight against it. So what exactly is Tesco Law? At one end of the spectrum you will find people saying it is a dilution of law, putting sophisticated work in to the hands of automatons. At the other end it is the access to justice with a balanced price and value.
I have a different take on it though. It may well be a consumer conglomerate coming in to the market, steamrolling everything and everyone in its path. The signs are not good if you look at the personal lines insurance market. But Tesco is not an underwriter and nor is it a solicitor. Tesco is a brand and in the case of the law they need solicitors. What I think ‘Tesco Law’ is really about is law firms operating in such a way that their market, consumers, SME’s understand what they getting and what they are paying for it…a bit like buying a loaf of bread at…Tesco. That is the great leap that law firms have to make. It has been argued that solicitors are aloof, that they over engineer and many will argue that they are expensive, (although in the latter case that is a consequence of how society values things now). Imagine a world where you say what you will do and what it will cost before you commence doing it. That is a world a customer can identify with and start to engage.
Customer expectation, especially when driven via the internet or call centres, is that they want to know what they get for what price. They don’t mind a choice as they are more than capable of working out what is best. So what I think ‘Tesco Law’ will create in the legal market is something solicitors are not that used to…’the product.’ Up until now they have produced ‘the service.’ The product may be a discretionary trust will, it may be a shareholder agreement but it will come at a fixed price and have defined service levels to manage expectation.
For the law firm they can still offer ‘the service’ as well as ‘the product’ because technology can now allow that. Many clients will choose ‘the service’, many will choose ‘the product’ but the successful law firm will offer both.
