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MoneySupermarket.com enter the legal market

"In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools." Doris Lessing, 1919.

It has been reported today that MoneySupermarket.com are going to enter the legal market with comparison prices for conveyancing, personal injury and wills & probate. The Law Society Gazette wheeled in the usual experts to profess the end of the solicitors profession as we see it, and to warn of the need to get on board or wilter away.

In fact, it serves as an opportunity to increase your business. If you go onto moneysupermarket.com and do a search in any of the categories for a service, you will usually not find companies like Tescos or the Coop as producing the cheapest. If you shop at Tescos and compare their prices to a much smaller enterprise for groceries for example, Tescos is usually not very cheap. From personal experience, our local organic store is actually cheaper than Tescos on the vast majority of vegetables and fruit. The same will apply to legal services. A writer to the Gazette this week talks about the Cooperative Legal Services quoting a price of about £8,000 to undertake probate. The reason they can try and charge so much is because they can sometimes get away with it. On Moneysupermarket.com you cannot get away with it. Often solicitors firms on the high street will be cheaper than the bigger players, and in all likelihood the quotations for conveyancing, personal injury and wills & probate will be cheaper from smaller specialists who get listed on the Moneysupermarket.com website.

I have come across financial advisers with estate planning departments this week quoting £800 upwards for basic will writing services that are probably worth up to about £300 in a solicitors firm. It is perhaps a good example of a market that has no larger players being carved up by firms playing on the ignorance of their clients and charging fees that do not reflect a healthy profit or any work involved. Again, another reason why moneysupermarket.com may be a good option to consider joining.

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