This morning I bought my newspaper from a branch of a national chain of newsagents. As has been well reported, other branches sometimes include a stall run by lawyers whose firm has joined a national franchise. It is one of the supposedly big scary initiatives that will enable this franchise, or big-brand alternative business structures to roll all before them, crushing other consumer-facing firms like a juggernaut.

In some ways I think ‘good luck’ to a solicitor or paralegal standing in such places. For various ‘good causes’ I have stood in shopping centres, on the street, at freshers fairs and knocked on people’s doors, and I can tell you that getting people's attention for a chat is hard work.

But if solicitors are going to have a stall, I wonder if the place I bought my paper is the best spot? Its shops show all the signs of struggling with the same technological and business forces that are challenging, or are set to challenge, many legal practices.

The business has been hit by the erosion of the print magazine and newspaper market, and in traditional high-street branches has suffered just as other high-street shops have from the drift to purchasing online. The response has been to, I think, somewhat cheapen their offering. The aisles are rammed with special offers and promotions that leave you fighting for air.

On the counter where I paid for my newspaper, there was a slag-heap of 2-for-1 tokens that customers had slid off their newspaper as carefully as the shop assistant had placed them on top of the paper. The staff don’t seem especially trained up to recommend or explain products and services. I would struggle to steer my daughter’s wheelchair around the shop, and stopping for a chat would instantly block any aisle.

It would not be my first choice for a location to do a marketing exercise. Aside from a few spruced up outlets, the local branches of many banks feel similarly dowdy - the personal banker who ‘helped’ me to change some personal details was unable to spell ‘Society’, and it felt, shall we say, like the shadow economy was well represented in the queue for the desk.

So where should a lawyer be standing or sitting to better ‘reach out’ to the public?

I think a large DIY store or a garden centre would work well, where people are focused on home improvements and the future - some may even be doing up their house prior to a sale, or having just moved in, be chastising themselves for not having made a will yet. In a good DIY or garden centre, some customers will already be asking staff for advice. (A free filter coffee may be just the thing to go with a brief chat or a leaflet while one takes their email or phone number.)

The business studies or self-help sections of a big bookshop might work well for the same reason - people are at the start of something that’s important to their lives. A well-run gym may also work. I have never been to a ‘wedding fair’, but they must be worth considering.

I am not saying that public stalls like this are definitely the way forward, and I am sure they are quite wrong for many practices. And I have not here gone in to the economics of obtaining these locations.

But I do though think that the environment in which the public are approached should feel a bit more like it is on the up. (This place’s profits are on the up, but its ambience decidely is not.)

Standing next to a 2-for-1 sign feels like an unfortunately price-sensitive environment to be selling decent legal service in.

Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor

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