E‐quality in the e‐services provision of legal practices

Abstract

This paper examines the quality issues facing private legal practices as they try to offer services on the Internet. The threats and opportunities from offering high quality e‐services are examined as well as potential problems. E‐service operations are divided into “hard”, that is those operations concerned with ensuring the customer receives what was ordered at the right time, place, cost and condition, and “soft”, that is those concerned with Web site design, data information readiness and transactions. Quality measures for both types are proposed and the implications for the legal profession examined. The second half of the paper reports the findings of a survey of Merseyside legal practices in order to see the extent to which they are facing the challenges of the Internet and the issues of e‐service provision. The results show that the legal profession is being slow to introduce Internet technology and only a few firms are offering limited e‐services to their clients. The old attitudes of an aged and learned profession are proving difficult barriers to overcome as the profession battles to bring itself into the twenty‐first century.