Fully featured website will give consumers the ability to conduct instant and comprehensive evaluation of law firms, including pricing, service features and performance ratings
Wigster.com, which launches tomorrow evening with the first of its prime time TV advertisements, is promising to do for legal services what the likes of Moneysupermarket and Comparethemarket have done for financial services and insurance.
For the first time the British public will be able to submit an enquiry online and get a price back instantly from a range of registered law firms. As well as comparing costs, users can also evaluate different service features, such as whether a firm offers online case tracking, flexible payments or home visits; star ratings and performance feedback; and location and profile information.
Wigster founder Nick Miller believes the website will fundamentally change how consumers view and engage with law firms:
"Professional legal advice is invaluable – but why do law firms make it so hard for consumers to buy their services? Why are they not more accessible and transparent? Given that instructing a lawyer is invariably a distress purchase, and people then have the added concern of securing good advice, and the cost of that advice, it doesn't exactly help that there is such a big disconnect between law firms and their potential clients. Wigster is aiming to do what Gocompare, Comparethemarket and Confused did for insurance – remove the mystery and bring providers and consumers closer together via a user-friendly, 24/7 shop window."
Every day thousands of insurance policies are taken out by consumers who have done their online research and who have consequently been able to make an informed choice – and while price is a factor, other considerations like policy features and brand reputation are also taken into account. We believe Wigster can inspire the same sort of change within legal – through the website, law firms can provide consumers with sufficient comparative cost and service information to enable them to move forward with confidence and certainty. From tomorrow, consumers will be effectively able to buy legal services from the comfort of their own living rooms. "
Enquiries can be made across eight categories of personal law: property, debt, divorce and family, accident compensation claims, road traffic offences, employment claims, wills and probate, and disputes. Business law is also included with categories comprising of commercial property, litigation, business employment and corporate and business.
There is no cost to make an enquiry, no limit on the number of enquiries a user can make and no obligation to take anything further. If a user is interested in finding out more about a particular law firm after the pricing and service information has been posted, they can use Wigster to request that that law firm gets in touch, again without any obligation.
Although other comparison websites for legal already exist, Wigster believes it can legitimately claim to be the UK's first genuine consumer price comparison website in this space.
Nick Miller explains: "What sets this site apart from those that have gone before is that we have approached this very much from the consumer's perspective. Thanks to the rapidly maturing insurance comparison website market, consumers now have certain expectations of comparison websites – and Wigster is the first in the legal market to successfully bring together all the requisite features – from instant like-for-like pricing to customer feedback, from location information to filter searches."
The launch television advertisement tomorrow – scheduled for the Emmerdale ad break – will be the first of three dozen 30-second slots to be shown in the Yorkshire TV region during November. Similar campaigns will be run during December and January ahead of a nationwide TV campaign planned for early Spring.
Editor's note
Nick Miller is available for telephone
interviews, and can arrange demonstration trials of the Wigster service.
Please liaise through PR Officer, Sarah Levick, contact details below.
Contacts:
For Wigster:
Sarah Levick
Tel: 07970 986710
E: sarah@networkjabber.com
