Lawyers have never believed themselves to be a service industry. But the days of hanging up your shingle and waiting for a grateful public to beat its way to your door are gone, replaced by an online environment where the power is shifting rapidly towards consumers.

Though the concept of lawyers selling their wares online is not new — so far it has largely been through brochureware and marketing portals — more sophisticated tools to help consumers to make informed decisions when choosing lawyers are coming on stream.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has a solicitor record section on its website, publishing disciplinary decisions that, so far, have been kept confidential. The Legal Complaints Service is working on controversial plans to assist consumers by making public the complaints records of law firms.

It is not hard to imagine a budding internet entrepreneur looking to bring this data together, as has happened in America. Avvo.com uses multiple information sources and an algorithm to generate a score out of ten for lawyers — but it does caution that it is just one factor that consumers should take into account. It is the brainchild of Mark Britton, former general counsel of Expedia, the travel company, who says that the idea came when he was taking time out of the law and teaching in Italy, and yet still contacts were calling him for help in finding lawyers (Avvo’s name comes from the Italian word for lawyer, avvocato).

“These are smart, educated people but when it comes to making good choices in the legal industry, they feel lost and powerless,” he says. “It’s just replicating the process of someone calling me and asking if I’d recommend a lawyer.”

Britton says that in some ways law firm marketing has not moved beyond Yellow Pages ads. “Should people be choosing their lawyer on the basis of who has the biggest ad?” he asks. Last year Avvo was sued over the score that it gave two Seattle lawyers. The claim was dismissed on the ground that the rating is clearly a subjective opinion and thus protected free speech.

Rankings in the UK have been largely confined to commercial law directories, but other initiatives to help consumers are emerging. The idea behind Rapoport’s Directory, an online register of lawyers’ professional experience, is that if a consumer wants to sue a bank over its charges, for example, the site will find a lawyer who has a track record of doing exactly that. Lawyers can upload their details free.

Another is takelegaladvice.com, in which individuals or businesses enter their legal problem and receive responses from law firms on the company’s panel from which they can choose a lawyer. The firms pay an annual fee to be involved. Essentially, it saves the bother of having to call round local solicitors and gives a decent basis on which to proceed.

Mary Heaney, a director, says the aim is to provide “more accessible information about lawyers”. The site identifies ten firms that match the user’s criteria. They have 48 hours to respond. “The lawyers who have some empathy and offer some solutions on the spot are most successful,” she says.

Speaking recently at a round-table debate hosted by Rapoport’s Directory, Professor Richard Susskind, the Times Law columnist, said new information flows were needed to help people to make informed decisions and move away from “the word-of-mouth, personal chemistry model”. He predicted that three forms of technology would come together to enable consumers to go online and find the appropriate lawyer at the most reasonable price: auctions, such as eBay; systems that canvass people’s views of how they found goods or services; and price comparison. “You’ll be able to check on their reputation and there’ll actually even be auctions among people who compete with one another. That is a fundamentally new way of selecting lawyers.”

This trend goes side by side with the growing confidence of membership organisations such as the AA, Co-op and Which? in promoting their legal services offerings — Which? Legal Service has provided 60,000 pieces of advice to subscribers over the past year. Then there are the likes of Epoq, the legal IT company that specialises in automated document production and is pushing the boundaries of what can be done online. Its MyLawyer service looks to appeal to Generation Y, which wants its legal advice, as with everything else, online.

With Tesco Law and, who knows, “Google Law” also on the horizon, the pressure on traditional high street solicitors will only keep growing, but at least, for now, they do not get a mark out of ten. Britton has no immediate plans to expand to the UK but has taken the precaution of registering the Avvo name here.

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