Half of the population experiences a legal problem in any one year. Only half of them ever seek any sort of advice. That is surprising.
But what is shocking, is that of those who do seek advice for a legal problem, only around 30% seek advice from a lawyer. The rest ask other people: friends and family, and some professionals like financial advisors and doctors.
Why don’t they ask the expert who could help? A range of reasons it seems, but mostly because we’re hard to find, and they’re worried we’ll cost too much.
If only there was someone you could go to, whom you could trust – to listen, work out what needs to be done, help you assess whether it was worth doing anything, and then put a plan in place to help – like your GP doctor for health problems.
There is a professional like that – the general practice solicitor.
In a time of increasing specialisation in legal practice, there is more need than ever for general practitioners who know how all the specialist pieces fit together, and can be the starting point for any legal issue.
We can help you with most of the common legal issues that arise everyday for individuals and small businesses. Like your GP doctor, one of our core skills is diagnosis. We work out what sort of legal help you need. If we can help you, which we can for most common problems, we do. But we also recognise when you need specialist help, and we can refer to you to specialists we have confidence in.
It is our ethical duty to put the client’s interests first – this provides tangible value. If we don’t think your legal issue is worth pursuing, we’ll tell you that and save you time, money and stress.
I think it’s also our duty to do more to make sure people with legal problems can find us when they need us.
That’s why, now I am back in legal practice, I’m committing to writing regularly about general practice lawyering – so more people understand what we do, and the value we can bring when next they have a legal problem.