Welcome to Legal Services Shop. This site is owned by Judicium Legal Marketing Limited and any correspondence with us will have Judicium Legal Marketing Limited in the letterhead. Our offices are in central London at 5 City Cloisters, 196 Old Street, London, EC1V 9FR. As you can see from the press comments above, we are the major legal services company on the Internet and one of the longest established.

Our site works in two ways:
First, it provides free legal information on thousands of topics using our freelawyer service. This is a vast database of law which is written by solicitors/barristers and provided on this website for free. Bear in mind however that there is no free follow-up service, if your particular query is not covered, or you need further explanation, or you wish to speak to a solicitor - these services will incur a charge.

Second, we offer quality-monitored legal services at prices that you can ascertain in advance. Where we are able to offer a fixed price for the particular service, for example uncontested divorce £360 plus vat, then that is what we do. Where we cannot offer a fixed price, then we will set out an hourly charge.

If you are unsure as to which parts of the website are free, and which are not, just remember that unless and until you are asked to enter your credit card details, you will not have to pay for using the site. If you do elect to use our paid-for services, it is most important that you understand what our obligations are to you. Please read OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU as well as the User Agreement.

Frequently asked Questions

What is Legal Services Shop?

How does Legal Services Shop work?

How do you select which law firm to allocate my work to?

Can you guarantee that only a local law firm will be allocated to my work?

How do the fees quoted on Legal Services Shop compare with those elsewhere?

How is Legal Services Shop funded?

What is the freelawyer box and pictures in the middle of the front page?

Why have you changed name?

Who is my contract with?

What is Legal Services Shop?
Legal Services Shop is exactly what it says: a shopfront where you can purchase legal services with clear, guaranteed prices and checks on quality of service. We encourage you to read carefully 'Our Commitment' to you so that you know exactly what you are - and are not - entitled to expect from our services.

Whilst the company is run by lawyers formerly in private practice, we are not a firm of solicitors and do not provide legal services ourselves. All the services on Legal services Shop are provided by Solicitors' firms based around the country. Every solicitors' firm that wishes to offer its services through Legal Services Shop has to adhere to certain conditions that we insist on relating to price and quality of service. You can read those conditions here.

How does Legal Services Shop work?
In order to purchase any service on Legal services Shop (other than simply advice), you must pay a deposit online - the reason for this is for us to make sure that you are serious about proceeding. The sum of the deposit will be deducted from your final bill. Once your purchase is made, this is what happens:

• First, your matter is allocated to one of our approved law firms who is given your details and any information you left with us. The law firm will be selected according to the area of the country where it is based and the type of law that it practices. This happens within the first hour, assuming that it is a working day.
• Second, provided that your purchase was made before 4pm, the law firm will contact you the same day to discuss how to proceed. Otherwise, it will contact you the following working day.
• Third , once the law firm contacts you and discusses the matter with you, your relationship with the law firm is that of normal client and solicitor. In other words it is subject to the rules, regulations and safeguards imposed by the Law Society of England & Wales.

How do you select which law firm to allocate my work to?
Provided that a law firm is on our panel, and have agreed to our terms of service, we use two factors. The first and most important factor is that they be specialists in the particular area of law. In other words, a company needing trademark services needs a law firm specialising in trademarks. This may sometimes mean that the law firm which is allocated to your work may not the nearest to you (or in some cases in the same town).

Once we are happy that we have a specialist firm to deal with your work, the second factor is geography: we try to get you the nearest law firm available to your home/work. Sometimes however, even this is not possible as the law firm may be too busy or for some reason unavailable. To summarise: we will try and find you the nearest law firm to you that specialises in the type of work you require - but we cannot guarantee that we will always succeed in allocating a law firm in your district/town. If the law firm we allocate is too far for you to feel happy using them, contact us on the same day that they make contact and we will refund your deposit.

Can you guarantee that only a local law firm will be allocated to my work?
No we cannot, for these reasons: we may not have a local firm on our panel, there may not be a local firm that specialises in the type of law you require, the local law firm may be too busy to take your work on. If the law firm we allocate is too far for you to feel happy using them, contact us on the same day that they make contact and we will refund your deposit.

How do the fees quoted on Legal Services Shop compare with those elsewhere?
They are generally around 10% lower than if you walk in to a solicitors firm. The reason for this is volume. If you approach a car company and say I want to buy one car, you are likely to be quoted a price substantially higher than if you ask for 100 cars. The same commercial principles apply to any service. When we originally agree to work with a law firm, the fees they charge are agreed not on the basis of one conveyancing or divorce or employment claim etc - but on the basis of hundreds. This also means that it is in the interest of law firms to provide excellent service for our users - otherwise they risk losing not just one client but hundreds.

How is Legal Services Shop funded?
Legal Services Shop is funded by the marketing/advertising fees paid by solicitors firms around the country. This may involve paying an annual fee to advertise on the site or an administration fee for processing the initial enquiry. We do NOT take a percentage of the legal fees.

What is the freelawyer box and pictures in the middle of the front page?
Freelawyer is a vast database and expert system designed to explain as much of the law as is possible without incurring legal fees - the system is integrated into the front page of Legal services Shop and is free to use. Freelawyer is recognised as the best such system in the world and has won numerous awards including being voted among the top 18 web sites in the world (see press comments about our company).

Why have you changed name?
This website was previously known as Freelawyer.co.uk so why have we changed name? In terms of visitor numbers, Freelawyer was probably the most successful legal website in Europe for public use. We named it freelawyer because of the vast array of free information provided by the virtual-lawyers - over 1 million words of legal text. Freelawyer cost £1.6 million to set up and around £350,00 per year to maintain - but cost nothing to use. The costs are subsidised by our parent company Judicium Legal Marketing Ltd.

We still offer the Freelawyer service, but now we also offer legal services involving solicitors and barristers who, of course, need to be paid. That is why we changed name. Freelawyer is still free to use but if you want a solicitor/barrister to do some work for you, there will as you might expect be a charge involved. Finally, and with a few exceptions, if a qualified solicitor/barrister is offering to work for you for free with no visible means of getting paid, you might remember the adage 'if it sounds too good to be true…. '.

Who is my contract with?
When you instruct us that you want to purchase a legal service by leaving a deposit online, we then have certain obligations to you. To read more about these click on Our Commitment to You. Once you and the law firm have made contact, then you will have a contract with the law firm to provide the legal services you requested. The initial deposit you provided online will be deducted from their final bill.

Our commitment to you

• the law firm we allocate your work to will be registered with the Law Society of England & Wales as being entitled to practise law within the jurisdiction of England & Wales
• will be specialists in the legal area concerned, we will not allocate your work to a law firm with little/no experience of practising in the relevant area of law
• will have at least £1 million pounds of Professional Liability Insurance in case something goes wrong
• will provide its services at the rate that you were quoted on the site for a minimum period of six months. If any work is still outstanding after six months have elapsed, any increase in fees will not be greater than 5% above the Retail Price Index
• will adhere to the highest standards of client satisfaction, in particular ensuring that you are regularly updated on any fees that you are incurring and any significant developments in your case
• will be monitored by us in terms of negative feedback from our users. We will investigate any complaints and may remove a law firm from our panel if we judge that they do not merit inclusion for this or for any other reason whatsoever.
• Once the law firm allocated to your work makes initial contact with you (or vice versa), YOU may decide for whatever reason that it is unsuitable for your needs. If that is the case, we will refund your £70 deposit provided that you call us on the same day that you and the law firm first make contact. Once you call us, we will give you a cancellation code to quote on any future correspondence. Of course you may decide to stop using the law firm at a later stage, but if that is the case you will be expected to pay for any fees incurred up to then and we will not refund your deposit.