Bar Select: Who what why?
30th August 2009
On 1 October 2009 the new Bar Select service (www.barselect.co.uk), first announced in July this year, will 'go live'. What is it all about? We asked Peter Rouse, the man behind the scheme.
According to a recent survey for LexisNexis, the legal database company, 86 percent of lawyers ages 25 to 35 are members of social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, as opposed to 66 percent of those over 46. For those just out of law school, "this stuff is like air to them," said Michael Mintz, who manages an online community for lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell Connected.
Millions of us now 'compare the meerkat' to buy our car or house insurance online; plan and book ours holidays or flights online; research restaurants, travel plans and even parking online; move house and submit final meter readings for gas/electricity/water, arrange mail forwarding with the Post Office and obtained removals quotations online. Why? Because it's easier to do these things online and it seems we like to do our own research and prefer to compare for ourselves what is on offer before we decide we need to speak to someone. The Internet is fast becoming the great facilitator that it has long promised to be.
Bar Select claims to be taking the next evolutionary step in making the Bar more accessible to professional clients, offering a search, comparison and booking service online. Clients will complete a booking form summarising their case and either search for barristers registered with the site or place the job on a public list that barrister members can bid for. Client and barristers can exchange communications through the site which are recorded for the client to use for comparison. Finally a booking can be made and entered into a diary (a Barsquared LEX diary hosted by Bar Select) so that future diary entries for the case can be notified to the client.
Peter Rouse said: "In the legal services market the Internet has long been used to market solicitor firms and chambers and many now offer more than just brochures providing download materials such as documents, podcasts (sound recordings) and even vodcasts (video recordings); interactivity is 'the new black' and the solicitor firms lead the way in this field as you would expect. But this is more than a fashion trend; it is a definite shift in what clients expect from their legal professional advisors. It is not the dreaded 'commoditisation' of legal services but rather a move towards mass personalisation of services, using online tools to facilitate that evolution."
It remains to be seen if the profession embraces this new approach.