Tech and Auto

The Online Digital World Opens Up Legal Representation

Finding a great solicitor is easy when you know how. Online reviews, word-of-mouth referrals, the type of work they do etc. Here’s what you should do when looking for a good solicitor.

It’s important to find a great solicitor

There are plenty of good solicitors in the country but finding a great solicitor to represent you in your claim or defence is extremely important. Whilst any solicitor will be a trained professional representing you to required legal standards, the great solicitors are the ones who see things a little differently, find things others might not and prepare their statements in away good solicitors are still learning to do. Finding a great solicitor to represent you for a claim or defending a claim is the smartest thing you’ll ever do!

How to find a great solicitor

There are plenty of ways in which you can find a great solicitor. You can do this both, by researching solicitors offline, but the quickest and easiest way is to do some online research. It’s all in the preparation and research when you’re searching for a solicitor, so make sure the following activities are on your ‘to-do’ list before you go picking any random solicitor:

Understanding the type of legal representation, you need

It is not uncommon for people to seek legal advice from the wrong solicitors, adding wasted time to their research. If you’re looking for employment law, and contact a solicitor which specialises in family law, you’re not researching correctly, and need to take a step back. Remember what your case is about and re-align your research to find the best solicitors in the type of law you require representation in.

Why location doesn’t matter

When digital media and the internet didn’t exist, you’d be hard found to see someone look for legal advice outside of their town or city. However, as time has changed, you’d be foolish now to not seek the best legal advice no matter where in the country the law firm resides.

You deserve the best representation you can get, so it doesn’t matter if you’re based in Luton, Liverpool or London but find a firm like Aston Knight Solicitors (based in Bury, Greater Manchester) providing an exceptional legal representation in Family Law and other areas of law nationwide, then you should still consider them to represent you.

After all, with mobile phone technology, Skype etc. there is no reason why contact cannot be swift, efficient and professional with a solicitor outside of your city or county.

Finding solicitors using search engines

Understand the types of things you’d search for when seeking legal advice online. One of the best ways to find great solicitors is to use the type of law you’re seeking advice in, and then add the word ‘solicitors’ to it.

This will bring up geo-targeted results based on your location. To change this, add ‘UK’, ‘US’ or whichever country you’re from to the end to widen the results. If you know how, use ‘incognito mode’ in your browser to stay location neutral. The search results will appear for your countries capital city; however, you can still search outside of this using key city’s you’re interested in finding representation from.

Using online reviews to help you find a great solicitor

Reviews are King, but context behind these reviews are Queen. If a solicitor has 3 or 4, 5-star reviews from similar types of people saying similar things, focused on the same law etc. it’s fair to assume these could be falsified. Any solicitor that engages in this ironic activity should be avoided, however, there are always people out there who do, so be aware.

You’re looking for a solicitor who has both Google and Facebook reviews of 4.5/5 and has 10’s to 100’s of reviews from varied personal, reviewing based on different types of law.

Additionally, look for who’s reviewing them, and if they are on any other types of review websites. Google pulls in data from review websites to fuel their own reviews, so ensure you’re checking out reviewsolicitors.co.uk too, to ensure you can really learn about the solicitor you’re interested in being represented by, and how they deal with their clients.

Finding bad press is a good thing

Once you are set on a few solicitors, google search their name and ‘reviews’, or use the Google ‘autocomplete’ feature to see what searches appear top in the list. If reviews appear high, or the solicitors name plus anything negative, it’s fair to say you need to take a deeper look into the articles for these search terms and really learn about your choice – this might be the difference between bad, good and great representation.

The key when searching for a great solicitor is to be well-equipped, researched and well-versed in what type of law you need. From there on, finding the right legal representation for you should be a walk in the park.

Jess Young

Jess is a writer at the UK's largest independent press agency SWNS. She runs women's real-life magazine Real-Fix.com, as well as contributing articles and features to all of the major titles and digital publications.

Published by