Fewer consumers were satisfied with the outcome and speed of their legal services matter in Wales than in England, and fewer Welsh legal services users found it easy to compare services in the principality than in England.
The insights come from the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s (LSCP) latest briefing which compares the experiences of users of legal services in Wales and England.
A survey of 4000 people who had used legal services in the last two years found consumers in Wales were slightly less satisfied with the service received from their legal services providers (88%) than consumers in England (91%). Fewer consumers were satisfied with outcome of their matter too; 87% of consumers in Wales satisfied with the outcome of their legal matter compared to 92% in England.
Satisfaction around speed was also lower in Wales, with 78% of consumers satisfied with the timely way their legal matter was handled compared to 83% in England.
The survey results indicate awareness of resources for selecting legal service providers is lower in Wales, the LSCP said. Only 4% of consumers in Wales used a legal regulator’s website to choose their service provider compared to 7% in England.
When shopping around, fewer consumers compared price and quality amongst legal services providers in Wales with 48% comparing price (compared to 58% in England) and 19% comparing quality (compared to 28% in England). The survey also suggests finding information about the legal services on offer appears to be harder for consumers in Wales, with 54% saying they found it easy to find out information about how long their legal service would take, compared to 68% of consumers in England.
Welsh consumers are more likely to use local firms, suggested the LSCP, with the survey results showing 68% of Welsh legal services users would frequently use smaller firms, compared to 59% in England.
The research also suggests a higher rate of fixed fee work in England. Half of Welsh legal services users (51%) said their bill was calculated based on a fixed fee; in England the figure was 57%. The continued use of hourly rate billing may explain the difference in price transparency the survey identified; with one in 10 consumers saying they first found out the price of their legal service when they got the bill compared to England (9%).
When it comes to technology, while 14% of consumers in Wales searched for a provider on the internet, only 9% chose their provider that way. In England, 19% of consumers said they searched for a provider on the internet and 12% chose one that way.
The results also suggested consumers in England felt it more important to have an online service that could be tracked (62%) than in Wales (56%); with 43% in England preferred using some form of video call to conduct the initial meeting with their lawyer, compared with 37% of consumers in Wales.
