Old Fashioned Service (Published 28/11/05)

It seems to me that more and more nowadays people are debunking the notion that new is necessarily better and going back instead to the old ways.

This affects the legal profession like everywhere else. There are people out there who would have you believe that you don’t need lawyers anymore. One particular theme is that you can get everything on the Internet anyway. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard somebody mention how you can now get a divorce over the Internet for the price of a bag of chips. What they actually mean of course is that you can go on to the Internet and download some forms if you really want to. Which is, of course, not the same thing at all. You’ve still got to fill them in. You’ve still got to understand them before you can even begin to fill them in. You still need the experience to know that if you tick box A you are going to encounter trouble later on but if you tick box B you’ll be okay. The vast majority of people still like the idea of having a knowledgeable, experienced hand guide them through the process, and that’s what we lawyers are here for. There is a world of difference between being able to do something if you really want to and hiring somebody who really knows their onions to do it for you or with you.

That’s what we lawyers are about nowadays. In particular, that’s what Wilsons Solicitors is about. If ever we, as a firm, get to the stage where we are just churning out legal services, a bit like other shops churn out products in boxes, then I know that our days will be numbered. Our sort of firm survives not by churning out standard products conveyor belt fashion but by giving a personal service and by being a mentor and a guide to our clients as they stroll through the unfamiliar and choppy waters that legal procedures so often represent. The personal touch is everything and that’s why we’re here 7 days a week.

John Wilson