Category: Business

solicitors legal fees

Increasing Solicitors Legal Fees

Hadaway & Hadaway

The information contained in this article about increasing solicitors legal fees is easy for you to implement and, if you implement it properly, it shouldn’t damage your conversion rate. The end result is that you’ll be charging higher rates while still maintaining the same level of people instructing you. Think about how much more money you could be making in that situation.

Why You Should Charge More for your solicitors legal fees

The first step is to answer the question of if you believe you’re providing people with a good service. If you can’t say yes to that question then it’s time for you to make some changes; either change the way you handle business or change your profession. Many people will likely be as confident as I am that they provide a great service. I am confident that I can help any solicitor that asks me for help increasing their profits. I am also sure that you would feel confident you could do the best possible job for any client that asks you for help. The fact that you do a good job is why people come to you in the first place.

So if you accept that you do provide an excellent service; isn’t it only fair that you get reimbursed properly? The answer should, once again, be “yes”.

How Can You Charge More?

1.  Start by Selling Your Services to Existing Clients

When you sell your services to clients that are loyal to you you’re able to charge them more. These clients will come to you because they feel that you are their solicitor. This means that they won’t be trying to give you the run around. They shouldn’t be scared off as long as the price increase isn’t too high. Later on we’ll tell you how to get even more value out of your services.

Building Client Loyalty

To build up client loyalty it is vital that you communicate with them clearly and regularly. You should contact them at least once a month but you should aim for more. If you’re not in regular contact with your clients then it’s time you started. There are plenty of software tools out there that can help you do this so there’s no excuse anymore to not be in regular contact with your clients.

While you’re working for your client you should always give them the best service possible. If you’re going to give your clients a great service then they’ll never even consider going to someone else for legal help if you raise your prices. They’ll even recommend you to their friends and families to increase your business. If you ever think about the times you had to choose a professional service yourself you’ll realise how many times you’ve stuck with a company or a person because of the convenience of staying with them. Even if you feel someone is cheaper or could do a better job you stick with what you know. Your clients will think the same thing. If you do the bare minimum for someone they’ll probably stay with you, but if you give them an exceptional service they’ll be yours for years.

2.  Selling Yourself to Prospective New Clients

If you’re great at handling prospective new clients you’ll have no problem increasing the cost of your services. You might need to take a little time reviewing and improving your current process but it’s not like it will cost you anything to improve your practices. Here’s how to better sell yourself to prospective clients.

Listen to Their Needs

Everyone has two ears and a mouth but when solicitors call people on the phone to attempt to sell their services they are focused only on the mouth. They are all about talking and never about listening. You need to stop thinking of your price and start thinking of the client’s needs.

Just making the effort to really listen to your clients and their needs will put you ahead of the competition. Almost every solicitor starts talking about the price almost instantly without even finding out why someone needs to move home, make a will, or how much pain the client is in if they are considering a personal injury claim.

If you take a few minutes to find out why a client needs to do something then you’re pretty much two thirds of the way to closing the deal. If you don’t listen to their needs then you’ll never be able to match your services with their needs, which brings us to step two;

Match your Services to The Client’s Needs

Knowing why the client needs to do something makes it much easier for you to explain to them how your services are perfect for them. I remember a time I sat in on an interview with a sales manager interviewing a potential employee. It was the worst interview I’d ever seen because the interviewer was telling the interviewee exactly what he wanted. All the interviewee had to do was repeat back what he was told, and he got the job. It didn’t matter if it was true or a lie. What mattered is that he told the sales manager exactly what he needed to hear and convinced him that he was right for the job.

What you need to do is take your client’s needs and explain how your services are a perfect match. If you can convince the client they are you’re much closer to making the deal.

Follow Up

It’s important that you take the time to follow up the call. You can do it by sending an email but sending an email and a letter is the better option. It’s important that you follow up with your call because, if your client has called more than one firm, they might forget which one you were representing

Finally

If you don’t hear back from the client and get their business you should give them a call. During the call find out if you answered all of their questions or if they had any more information they needed to make a choice.

How Much You Should Charge

The answer to how much more you should charge depends on how much your services are worth to your clients. These days solicitors have been reducing their conveyance costs so much it’s surprising that they are still in business. Remember that your services are worth as much as the client is willing to pay for them. Many solicitors will charge just £250 for their conveyance services while others will charge as much as £1250. Remember that this a £1000 difference for the same service. Of course you need to be providing a stellar service to be charging £1250 but if you charge that much you have the financial freedom to spend more time with the client, more time with the file, and more time ensuring that everything goes through properly.

A good way to get started is to increase your fee by £25 and see if it affects your conversion rate. If so then you can increase the price a little bit more. Keep on going until you find that you’re charging the maximum price that clients are willing to pay for your services.

When to Start Charging More

Right now of course! Give the next person who calls you your new rate. There’s no reason to wait.

Summary

To summarise; you simply aren’t charging how much you should be for your professional services. If you go through with the process properly you can begin charging more in a way that allows you to make your services even better.

Solicitors NE pi

Private Investigators & the legal process

Hadaway & Hadaway




There has been a general stigma surrounding private investigators of late, and this is primarily because of image that the recent high-profile cases involving them seem to portray.

If you follow these cases, a private investigator merely looks like a shady person who hacks into the target’s devices and gathers information. They look as if they are merely tools for journalists to gather information for their stories, but the truth cannot be far from this.

The fact is that private investigation is a completely legal line of work, and opting for such services doesn’t put you on the wrong side of the law. Only a small minority of public investigators use less than legal means, and unfortunately, they are also the most vocal, which is the reason for all this bad publicity.

Now coming to the matter at hand, there are a few things you should look at when you are hiring a Private Investigator.

Don’t hire the first investigator you find in the Yellow Pages. Do some research and only hire reputable companies. You would be surprised at the amount of shady websites set up, looking to take your money under the guise of offering private investigation services. So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

One way of reducing down is by choosing only firms that are part of a recognised organisation. Sure, it isn’t necessary for a private investigation firm to join these bodies, but choosing from these organisations is like having a stamp of approval. This is because bodies like World Association of Private Investigators or The Association of British Investigators have a strict code of conduct, and they let new members in only after they meet their high requirements. 

You now have a considerably smaller list, and to whittle down further, give them a call and ask them to find the Insurance Number and bank account details of your partner. Those who agree to do it should be removed from your list, and those who don’t are the ones that follow a strict code of conduct. You don’t want to get into any trouble with the law, and that’s why you should choose the latter..

Now’s the time to know which detectives specialise in the type of investigation you want to conduct. Simply go through their website, and find whether they can do what you want. Investigation as part of divorce proceedings? An investigation involving employees of a company? Do they showcase their portfolio of recent cases? If so, that’s a good way to know whether they specialize in the kind of investigation you want to conduct. You should also check their success-rate.

It’s time to get the final list, and for that, you can search their names with the word ‘review’ next t o them to find out the experiences of others. Is their success rate high? Are they involved in any legal disputes? Do clients say that they have had a bad experience with them? You should choose firms that have a good reputation online. 

Now, if you ask them whether what they are doing is legal, everyone will assure you of the same. But the good ones will assure you that they have gone through everything well within the confines of the law, and that the method of obtaining the evidence won’t compromise the case at all.

When choosing a private detective, better safe than sorry. This is because even if a single evidence is obtained through illegal means, not only does it compromise the case, it leaves you open for more court disputes.

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www.hadaway.co.uk

 

employment law

Things to consider regarding employment Tribunals for employers.

Hadaway & Hadaway

Q: What is stressful, time consuming and expensive?
A: An Employment Tribunal hearing.
You may be wondering about my out of the blue answer, and justly so. I am convinced that an Employment Tribunal Hearing can be one of the more stressful situations you can come across, and this isn’t some passing observation. I was actually a witness in such a hearing, and I got to know the ins and outs of the whole process. You are probably not familiar with an Employment Tribunal Hearing (Although anyone can see them), and that’s why I am here to break down the process for you.

Background
My involvement with the case didn’t start with me being a witness. In fact I was the lead investigating officer on a case of gross misconduct against one of my client’s employees. In fact, I was knee deep in related documents and was interviewing witnesses at that time to actually check whether there was a case to be made. I found the evidence quite compelling (Though not decisive), and informed my client, and they had a disciplinary hearing which resulted in the employee being summarily dismissed. The decision continued to be upheld in an appeal, which resulted in the employee contacting the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service  for early conciliation.

The employee’s demands were not agreed upon by my client’s company, and all negotiations fell apart, leading to an Unfair Dismissal case that had its first hearing in early 2015. Due to me being an investigating officer in the case, I was asked to appear as a witness.

Document Mountain
In the months before the hearing, the company’s lawyers dropped off a surprise: Two huge bundles of documents that I had to familiarize myself with, since they were to be presented to the judge. I had my work cut out for me. In addition to working through this pile of documents, I had to work on my witness statement, which had to favor the company while being the truth (I actually had to swear a legal oath involving the lines ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’, so you can imagine how serious the whole thing was.)

Indeed, these two tasks alone took two whole days, and we hadn’t even entered the meat of the proceedings: The Court.

In Court
On the day of the hearing, I set out early in order to reach the Court in time. Tribunal Hearings, contrary to what the name might suggest, actually involve a proper court with a qualified Judge and due process being followed. Very rarely are three-person panels appointed, and for cases like ours, a lone judge presides over us.

What surprised me was that the building where it was all supposed to go down was nothing remarkable. I was running around in circles looking for it, and then I realized I had been driving around the building itself. Outside, there was a small queue of people and some even had small suitcases. The whole thing could pass off as a scene at some holiday destination if it were not for their formal suits. We were allowed through at 9AM, instructed to wear identification badges at all times.

I waited along with the company’s other witnesses and the lawyers, in order to revise what he had to do. Witnesses of the Defendant and the Claimant would come first and second respectively, with all witnesses requiring to sign the witness statement on the witness table in front of the judge. Then, the witnesses had to truthfully answer questions posed by the Claimant’s attorneys.

My biggest mistake was assuming that my job would be done before the end of the day, and that’ll be that. It went on a lot longer and was a lot tougher than I ever imagined.

The Grilling
We all watched occasional Courtroom Dramas on Television, and going by them, we would expect lawyers to be  eyeballing and intimidating you every step of the way. While the actual behavior wasn’t like that, the intimidation was there, whether intended or not. It was induced by the calm yet endless stream of questions from the Claimant that was downright unnerving and exhausting. It wouldn’t end there. If we hadn’t done a fine job up on the stand, the defendant’s lawyers would come in to ask questions to save the day.

The process was so time-consuming that it took a whole day to get to the first witness, which was a stark difference from the minutes  I gave to each witness

The next day came with my turn on the witness stand. The Claimant’s representatives’ sole purpose was to make the other side look bad. Any evidence be brought up had to be undermined from their perspective, and so the job called for over-analyzing every single detail, and using it against us. I was asked to support my claims, justify them and made me question myself. It was that relentless. A single word could bring the whole thing crashing down. Leading questions, the things I witness, the words I used, nothing was left our.

The questions were so detailed that I didn’t know answers to some of them, and I felt as if I was lying to myself. That’s what a day in court does to you. It makes you doubt yourselves.

By the evening, I was an absolute mess, and I didn’t think before answering questions. I may well have jeopardized the case, and it does goes to show that being in Court isn’t as easy as it is touted to be. I was later free to go, but felt a bit sorry for the other witnesses who had to wait days just to get grilled like that.

Who wins?
It doesn’t tale a genius to figure out who would win the case before the judgment is actually announced. However, while it legally would be a win, financially, it won’t be that big of a win with the legal fees alone eclipsing the win. Lot of time too would have been wasted for what amounts to essentially nothing.

Last resort option
Before the hearing, I had gone to a related seminar, where an employment solicitor gave me some very important advice: A Tribunal Hearing should be a last option, and mutual settlements are the best way to settle any disputes. Of course, you can take the chances and take your employee up in Court, and you may very well win. But you are sacrificing significant time and money towards a small win, and in the long run, a settlement is the much better way to go. You need to choose what is best for your business, and if you have to sacrifice a bit for your previous employees in order to move forward, so be it.

Contact Hadaway & Hadaway for advice and help regarding employment law:
http://www.hadaway.co.uk/employment