How ShopLaw is Helping People Who Struggle to Find a Lawyer
A New Brunswick startup wants to change the way people find and choose their legal services.
Fredericton-based ShopLaw is an online platform that helps New Brunswickers find the right lawyer for their needs. Clients can compare lawyers based on prices, experience and reputation.
“It’s really just about making it convenient for consumers to access the information they need to make a confident choice when they’re hiring a lawyer,” says ShopLaw CEO Randy Campbell. “It’s just a really convenient way to choose a lawyer or in other words, we’re helping New Brunswickers find lawyers.”
The idea for ShopLaw came from an experience Campbell had about eight years ago when he was buying a home.
“I was going through the process and at some point, my real estate agent turned to me and said ‘who’s your lawyer?’ In my mind, I was like, ‘what? Are you crazy? I don’t have a lawyer.'”
Campbell did what most other people would do, he went through the yellow pages and asked friends and family for recommendations.
“Eventually I just picked the only [lawyer] I ever met in person,” says Campbell. “And really had no idea if their price was good or if their services were good and basically felt tricked by the whole process.”
He soon learned he wasn’t alone in his experience. According to market research done by ShopLaw, 83 per cent of the 800 Canadian legal service customers they surveyed found it frustrating, annoying, or scary to shop for a lawyer.
It’s not just Canada either. A recent government-led study done in the United Kingdom found that there’s not enough information openly available on price, quality or service for those looking for legal help to choose the best option.
“For a lot of people, the access to justice is an affordability issue,” says Campbell. “But there are lots of people who can afford legal services who just end up living without a will or proper documentation or live without a solution to their legal conflicts simply because it’s such an intimidating process to shop for a lawyer. They know they are at a disadvantage.”
ShowLaw offers customers two types of services, both of which are free to use. The first is a basic search platform to find lawyers offering common services like home purchases, wills, incorporations and co-habitation agreements. Consumers can instantly compare prices, experience and reputations.
The second service is a free-personal-shopping-service for consumers who need a more customized solution. ShopLaw currently offers up-front fixed-fee prices for 21 lawyers in Southern New Brunswick. The customer fills out a form describing their situation, then Shoplaw sends the issue to all the relevant local lawyers. Lawyers who do not have a conflict are invited to contact the customer directly.
Since launching about a month ago, Campbell says the response from their early adopters has been positive.
“We haven’t’ had any complaints,” he says. “Everyone that has submitted feedback or has responded to my request for feedback has been saying ‘it’s amazing. I love it. It was easy. Thank you for building this. I’ll definitely recommend it to my friends.'”
Going forward, ShopLaw is looking to expand their geographic range as well as expand its services to include public legal education resources like a free Q&A forum where people can ask basic legal questions to be answered by a lawyer. The company plans to grow its online database to include enterprise legal solutions by next spring.
Though the New Brunswick Law Society already has rules and guidelines in place for lawyers to follow and courses of action in places to protect consumers and keep lawyers accountable, Campbell says ShopLaw adds an additional level of transparency to the industry.
“Transparency is all about accountability and it’s all about adding to the value the law society already provides,” he says. “The law society provides a great source of accountability and transparency is a critical addition to that if we want to continue to have a valuable and accountable legal profession.”