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About Peninsulawyer
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I work on the Wirral peninsula in the UK as a solicitor specialising in corporate and commercial law.

The posts on this blog are my personal views on social media and technology in the law and the deregulation of UK legal services.

I may also throw in some corporate and commercial law from time to time.

I try to be accessible to anyone who wants to read and not just lawyers. If I am making a hash of this please let me know!

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    Tuesday
    Aug312010

    Food, drink, location and Twitter

    DateTuesday, August 31, 2010 at 9:12PM

    I haven't blogged much about Twitter recently. Rather than (over) thinking, I have just been tweeting and enjoying myself.

    An unlikely trigger started me thinking about it again over the weekend - a trip to the Wirral Food and Drink Festival.

    I knew there would be some local businesses there who use Twitter (like @cancookstudio and @theliverpoolmal), but I was surprised to see how many other names popped up when I did a Twitter search for the festival after it closed on Monday.

    There were some businesses I had actually bought things from (@starlysspice for instance) and others which I recognised from the festival like @corkshoutheswall and @kokonoir.

    It struck me that this could be really useful if you were trying to build relationships on Twitter with local businesses (or businesses in a particular sector). Simply search using the hash tag for an event you are at or search for references to its Twitter account (if it has one) or just search for its name.

    If businesses are serious about using Twitter then the chances are they will tweet about being at the trade show, festival or whatever and they will show up in your search. This is hardly new advice, but it struck me that there are three things which make this kind of search very useful:-

    • it shows you businesses who are active on Twitter and take the time to tweet from day to day (after all these are the ones you can build a relationship with using social media);
    • it shows up some businesses who might be hard to track down with a Twitter search for local businesses (maybe they don't tweet about being in your area, or they are from outside the area or see themselves as being national);
    • you are at the event so you can go have a chat with them and mention that you saw them on Twitter (which is a lot more memorable than simply popping up as another Twitter follower and also gives some reassurance that their tweets are finding an audience).

    Obviously it also gives you the chance to see how many of your existing Twitter followers are there and go and have a chat with them - after all, the objective of all of this is to build real life relationships - not just to interact online.

    I think that this is one of the areas where locational services will go from strength to strength (indeed I just saw a reference on Twitter today to Lanyrd which is a locational service specifically tailored to conferences and events and shows you which of your Twitter followers are speaking / attending).

    Could this be the answer to one of my previous posts about how law firms could use Foursquare and similar services? If you are running seminars or events then publishing a hash tag, using a specific Twitter account or even promoting Foursquare check-ins could add value for those who are attending, help them to network and help you to track who attended and follow up with them after the event.

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    Friday
    Aug272010

    Shareholders Agreements: cause or effect?

    DateFriday, August 27, 2010 at 11:48AM

    I have noticed something over the last few years whilst I have been dealing more with smaller family and owner-managed businesses.

    I often get asked about a falling-out or dispute between shareholders in the business. Typically these are either about how the other shareholder(s) are managing the business or how to "get rid" of a shareholder who the client can no longer work with.

    The first question I usually ask is "have you got a shareholders' agreement?". And the answer is almost invariably no. Sometimes these enquiries are really a storm in a teacup and the shareholders can resolve their differences and carry on. Other times they end up as long, protracted disputes which hamstring the business and cost a fortune in legal fees.

    However, I have noticed that I hardly ever get asked to look at a dispute where there is a shareholders' agreement in place and advise on how the shareholders' agreement should be used to resolve it. It does happen, but only very infrequently.

    Without getting into philosophical arguments about causality I think it is interesting to speculate on why this is. Does a shareholders' agreement magically prevent business owners from falling out?

    As much as I would like to say "yes" I suspect that that the reality is more prosaic. Firstly, the simple act of talking about the kinds of things which might go wrong in the business and how they could be resolved helps everyone involved to go into the venture with their eyes open. Secondly, the knowledge that there is a "fallback" mechanism in place if things go wrong encourages people to actually negotiate a sensible solution without involving the lawyers, rather than taking entrenched positions.

    There are lots of "reasons" for not getting around to putting a shareholders' agreement in place (uncertainty about the costs, tight cash flow in a new business), but to me this seems like a very good reason to do it at an early stage. Surely it is better than paying expensive legal fees to sort out a dispute later on?

    (Shameless plug alert:- Uncertainty about costs shouldn't really be relevant as a reason any more. You can register for an account on our Lees Direct service and fill in the simple interactive questionnaire with details about your business - and I will get in touch with a no-obligation quote for what it will cost to put one in place.)

    Has anyone noticed a different pattern or found an area where shareholders' agreements actually lead to disputes? Let me know in the comments.

     

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    Monday
    Aug232010

    A bit of TV history

    DateMonday, August 23, 2010 at 3:20PM

    This is probably of interest only to those with an obsessive level of interest in the Legal Services Act...

    But the inaugural Quality Solicitors TV advert will be screening tomorrow at 8:40 pm on ITV1 (in the middle of Who Wants to be a Millionaire - not sure if the timing is significant!).

    Apparently this is "The first ever terrestrial primetime TV ad for general legal services".

    Happy viewing!

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    Thursday
    Aug192010

    Go Compare the Money SuperMeerkat (or why I don't buy Wigster)

    DateThursday, August 19, 2010 at 7:00PM

    If you read the Law Society Gazette you probably saw this week's article about Wigster:-

    "the first legal services price comparison website to give consumers instant details of costs..."

    Leaving aside the fact that the Gazette chose to flag this as some kind of exclusive scoop (breaking news:- startup legal services company says yes to half-page of free publicity!) is this really quite as exciting as the article suggests?

    I do actually think that price comparison sites will gain traction in the legal services market. It is a proven business model and one which a lot of people would love to apply to a fresh market.

    There are two problems though. One for the businesses themselves and one for consumers.

    The problem for the businesses is summed up in the title to this post. The barriers to entry for comparison sites aren't that high and the legal market is fragmented. In the face of this it is difficult to see how one brand is ever going to dominate the market. Wigster may be the latest new arrival, but there will be plenty of law firms willing to sign up with the next entrant... and the one after that.

    The result will be the "Compare the Money SuperMeerkat..." syndrome all over again - a market saturated with comparison sites and no real reason to choose one over the others leading to an arms race of SEO and TV advertising budgets to try and build market share. Just Google "car insurance price comparison" for an illustration.

    Incidentally, Wigster may need to work on their SEO as a Google search for the term currently pulls up this rather worrying definition from the Urban Dictionary [N(really)SFW] as the second result... 

    For consumers the issue is different... and it is the same reason why I don't use price comparison sites for insurance any longer.

    Services which include a customer service element (like insurance if you are unfortunate enough to claim on it) aren't really commodities. The customer experience can vary wildly and what seems like a worthwhile saving at the point of purchase can prove very painful in the long run.

    Car insurance is a good example (and the one which put an end to my price comparison website days). I saved £40 or so using a price comparison site which gave me a good quote for a well-known (and widely advertised) online insurer. Unfortunately a few months later I was hit from behind by another driver... and then I had to start actually dealing with the insurance company.

    It took three separate visits to their authorised repairer to get the work done to a standard which I would accept and I spent about 20 minutes on hold or waited 2 days for an email response every time I had to try to contact the insurers to resolve the problem. A worthwhile saving? I certainly didn't think so at the time.

    I now use Direct Line who famously eschew comparison sites, cost slightly more but actually answer their phones.

    For legal services the customer service element is even more critical (as anyone who hasn't been able to get hold of their conveyancer at a critical stage in a house purchase will testify). I understand that Wigster will also host reviews on this and if they can get this part right then I think it will actually be a much more powerful feature than price comparison -- and if they can get it right in a way which others can't replicate then it could be the key to success.

    In reality though I think the services which really shake up the market will look much more innovative than price comparison sites.

    I have spent some time today looking at MinuteBox - a service which allows professionals to give advice by video in short time slots which fit around their other commitments. There are obviously big regulatory and risk management issues for legal professionals, but according to the founder of the service Josh Liu (@uniquejosh on Twitter) they are looking at ways to address this.

    I could well be wrong, but I suspect that the businesses which will really shake up the legal services market may bear more resemblance to MinuteBox than to price comparison sites.

    What do you think? Are price comparison sites going to rock the legal world... or merely lead to a lot more annoying TV ads?

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    Thursday
    Aug122010

    Willing to pay a Freemium?

    DateThursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:38PM

    Like a lot of businesses, we use Hootsuite to manage several Twitter accounts.

    It has a lot of advantages over the Twitter web interface including the ability to pipe RSS feeds to your Twitter stream and allow multiple team members to collaborate in managing the accounts.

    However, Hootsuite is now "going Freemium". Basic accounts will still be free, but the enterprise features such as multiple RSS feeds and team members will command a price.

    The damage ranges from $4.99 per month for a package which allows multiple RSS feeds up to a truly eye-watering $1,499 per month for the enterprise package which allows you to have more than eight team members and various other goodies.

    This has been on the cards for a while (after all Hootsuite were always going to need some kind of revenue stream) and the "Freemium" model is hardly revolutionary any more. Indeed, it seems likely to make increasing inroads into the legal market (see for example the recent Law Society Gazette article on whether the Freemium model could work in legal services).

    However, I wonder how small businesses who use Twitter will react? Ning came in for a lot of flack from users when it decided to start charging earlier in the year and a couple of groups of which I am a member decided to relocate as a result. Will the same thing happen with Hootsuite..? after all it is a lot easier to move Twitter clients than to migrate a Ning group.

    I have a gut feeling that 'Freemium' seems more attractive when you sign up for it at the start... and less so when it suddenly means paying for something which you have got used to using for free.

    On the other hand, Hootsuite have to make money and you could argue that $50 per month is nothing compared to the benefits your business reaps from having access to an enterprise-grade tool to manage your Twitter presence.

    What do you think? Are you going to move to a paid Hootsuite account or do you think this will lead to a mass exodus of business users?

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