The Daily Telegraph and another national newspaper are to launch their own legal referrals services. The newspapers have tied or are about to tie deals with legal referrals company Contact Law to offer the company's service under their branding.

The Telegraph could launch its service, Telegraph Solicitors Network, as early as this week, the Gazette understands.

The newspaper’s service will be a legal services ‘microsite’ and own-brand referral service, and will be advertised online whenever readers see legal news and advertisements in the newspaper. The Express and Star newspapers already have own-brand services run by Contact Law, but the Telegraph will be the first major broadsheet foray into the world of legal services middlemen.

James Vintin, a director at Contact Law, confirmed that the Telegraph had signed up to the service. Providing a legal service for branding by another company, or ‘white labelling’, is ‘helping the consumer have the reassurance of a brand and letting us channel them to the right adviser’, he said. Contact Law is also currently in talks with companies in the banking and retail sectors, Vintin added.

Growth in ‘re-branding’ by non-legal businesses is inevitable, said Tony Williams, legal management consultant and former managing partner of Clifford Chance. Because law firms have to pay firms like Contact Law to be on the preferred list, being put in front of the best prospects is paramount, he said, and Telegraph readers are among those prospects.

‘Despite what we think in the legal market there aren’t really major legal brands, and for firms to get a large market share either locally or nationally has proved difficult,’ said Williams. ‘Provided you’re hitting the right target audience it makes a lot of sense, and I think we’ll see more, whether it’s papers, insurance renewals or websites.

‘You've now got a lot of people who are comfortable with making a first contact online. Obviously you’ve got to make sure the economic model works, but if organisations have spare capacity this is a way of mopping some of that up.’

Legal business guru and director of the College of Law’s Legal Services Policy Institute, Professor Stephen Mayson, commented that the newspaper services are part of a trend of ‘intermediation’.

‘What’s being proposed is entirely consistent with the general trend of referral agencies interposing themselves between solicitor and client,’ he said.

‘It’s all part of the redistribution of work and profits that is now taking place within the retail legal services market. The winners, whether law firms or new providers and intermediaries, will be those with the best marketing and perceived added value to clients.’