Consumers face barriers to use of comparison sites

A year-long pilot exploring the use of customer reviews and comparison websites in the legal sector found that, although consumers find them useful when choosing a provider, a lack of data makes it difficult to make meaningful comparisons.

The pilot, run by CILEx Regulation alongside the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Council for Licensed Conveyancers, brought together a range of digital comparison sites with 70 law firms to understand and test how the two could better work together to benefit both consumers and the firms themselves.

It found that customer review websites were used far more widely by both the public and law firms than sites comparing price or other factual information, with nearly half of law firms encouraging existing clients to post reviews to third-party sites. The majority of firms who did this said it provided a positive business benefit.

The pilot report found barriers to the effective use of comparison sites were “a lack of public awareness, the complex nature of legal services and the relatively limited range of data available on firms profiled”.

Many firms felt that their own websites, where prices could be set in wider context with background information, were a more appropriate place to make such information accessible.

Robert Morris, CILEx Regulation’s interim CEO, said the work would feed into a planned evaluation of the regulator’s transparency requirements and that it would “now build on the pilot findings to identify how law firms, comparison and review websites can continue to improve in this area”.

The pilot also considered what further indicators of quality might be useful in helping consumers make more informed decisions. Areas explored included data on complaints, errors in conveyancing transactions and employment case outcomes. It found that challenges existed “in identifying data that consumers can readily compare without wider context”.