prise and quality-where is the link
Price and quality – where is the link?
There is an essential question for a customer - whom they can trust the process of supporting their legal cases in order to be sure in a positive result. The situation is the same for all kind of services – a customer tries to find the most preferable and optimal combination of price and quality of legal services. The question is – can highly priced services guarantee high quality? Maybe there are some other mechanisms of choosing professional companies?
In an interview, Katherine Yegorova, the head of competitive law department of Amparo Consulting Group, highlights the main aspects of a process of choosing the law company and what factors can indicate the quality of legal services provided by law companies on the Ukrainian legal services market.
Are there any direct links between price and quality of legal services on the Ukrainian legal market?
Of course there should be a balance between quality and price, but there are many other factors that can influence on a price forming process. High price does not always mean that the problem will be solved faster, better and with a guarantee. Price will always depend on a qualification of a lawyer, company’s status, especially if it is an international company, and expenditures needed for dealing with a case etc. In the conditions of our business market it is better to give the case for a directly specialized company that will optimize the expenditures for its supporting. There are cases that can be supported by the small specialized company (for example, land disputes) in better way and the expenditures for such services would be less than for services provided by an international company for the same case. Specialists of international companies are usually hired if cases include international relations and should be regulated by international legislation.
There are cases that should be supported by national companies and for sure there are cases that can not be successfully fulfilled only with involving whether an international partner of a national company or directly an international company.
The main factors which can indicate quality of law companies’ services - is it price, staff/partners or a successful company’s profile etc.?
The national market of legal services is overcrowded by various law companies that provide different offers. The main problem is to choose a right one. Law companies can appear and disappear at the same moment without control and response. However the work of them is really important for a customer and could have many further consequences.
Everybody understands that a well known name is more often good job of a PR manager first of all and only then results of the lawyers’ work. There are many companies that have high prices without background. That is why we should take into account that companies are usually evaluated by its specialists and their profiles. Nowadays we always try to collect recommendations and only then give the case to a direct specialist not a company.
The main problem in this sphere is that there is no an authority that can control and regulate the quality of legal services; the only indirect control is made by the High Qualification Commission of Advocacy. It controls the work of advocates that got their certificates after passing a qualified exam and the qualification of them are proved by it. A customer has the right to lodge a complaint against an advocate, but there is an open question connected with compensation.
How to make a choice in order to win and is it possible to give guarantee to a customer by Law Company?
One problem is to find a good and qualified specialist and absolutely another is to get a guarantee from a specialist. All businesses that are running in Ukraine are adopted for current changeable conditions, namely political, economic and social. There are too many conflicts of laws in various spheres of the Ukrainian legislation that create impossibility to give a guarantee for a customer for achieving any result. There are some kinds of services that could be provided with a guarantee without any problem, but usually a customer tries to get it for services which results depend on influence of many external factors, sometimes unpredictable.
