Research by MyLegalAdviser.co.uk has found that 60% of SME law firms are turning a blind eye to £7.5bn of new business by not having an online presence. Individuals and small businesses alone spend a combined £21 billion a year on legal services in the UK, with 37% of cases now secured online.

Every year, over 20 million online searches are made for legal services in the UK but 2,707 law firms are unable to be found as they don’t even have a website.

The SRA’s forthcoming ‘Looking to the Future’ programme will ask law firms to publish details about their pricing online to ease consumer confusion. However, with a new website costing at least several thousand pounds to create, this will be a costly initiative for thousands of firms.

Added to the price of the website build are the marketing costs to ensure the website ranks highly on google and can therefore be found easily.

An affordable alternative is to sign up to an online legal marketplace like MyLegalAdviser which has thousands of potential clients visiting each month to find legal support. Solicitors are able to accurately quote for new business based on detailed and specific briefs provided by the site’s growing customer-base. This gives law firms access to a new channel for generating a high volume of new business.

Unlike other lead generation techniques such as PR and advertising, it’s free for solicitors to register and bid for jobs. Once a client posts a job on the platform, it’s circulated to suitable lawyers (on an anonymised basis) to review and quote on it if they’re interested. Clients review quotes and profiles from interested lawyers and shortlist those they’re interested to be put in touch, at which point the lawyer pays a small introductory fee. This means lawyers only pay to market to warm and verified leads.

Alex Boothman, CEO of MyLegalAdviser, said: “It is difficult to pinpoint why so many law firms haven’t adopted an online presence as yet but that shouldn’t stop them from taking advantage of the huge new business opportunities that can be found online. Rather than create a website, you can create a profile on MyLegalAdviser and have access to new business within a few minutes.”