We all know the challenges that UK businesses are currently facing, and law firms are no different. With consumer spending power set to fall and personal bankruptcies predicted to rise, it’s important that you take the right steps to protect both your firms and your clients.
One of the easiest ways you can do this is to introduce consumer credit checks into your onboarding process. This simple step is quick and painless, whilst also providing you additional insights into your clients and how you can best help them.
Let's look at why you should be using consumer credit checks at your law firm.
You want to help all your clients as much as you can but the fact of the matter is you must be paid for doing so. Not all clients will be able to afford the level of service needed to secure their optimal desired outcome, and some wont be able to afford you at all.
By checking client credit scores, you are able to identify who may have trouble paying you and factor this into your advice to them.
For your part, you are able to do your job more effectively, manage client expectations, and avoid performing work that you may not be paid for.
For your clients, they are able to make an informed decision on whether to proceed and what there outcomes are; importantly, clients suffering form financial difficulties avoid bill shock and potentially harming their financial position further.
It takes minutes to perform a consumer credit check and does not require any action or inconvenience on your client’s behalf.
But they can save you wasting hours on cases that you will not be paid for or that will require a significant amount of chasing.
We’ve already seen that consumer credit checks save you time; and time is money!
Obviously, by avoiding performing work that you don’t get paid for your better off financially, but they also save you the extra cost of your time chasing the debt and of any debt collection procedures.
By confirming that each case you take on has the funding behind it you need to secure your clients the result they wanted.
Happy clients are themselves some of the best protection for your professional reputation, and also provide free word of mouth advertising for your practice.
This is somewhat of a bonus benefit of employing consumer reports, but credit checking applicants provides you with further insights into if they are financial responsible and stable.
This is becoming standard practice across the professional industries, where your employees will be providing key advice and even at times accepting responsibility for client funds.
Red Flag Alert offer lawyers with a complete solution to digitally transform their risk and compliance processes. We make sure you’re making safer decisions with better data, in a fraction of the time it takes you now.
To find out more about how we will make your firm smarter, safer, and faster; speak to an expert today.