YouGov’s qualitative research team worked with participants who had searched – or were searching - for a legal service provider within the last 12 months. The group contained a mix of demographics from various locations and included vulnerable people such as those on benefits and with limited or no access to the internet.
The research comprised behavioural online forums to understand individual behaviours as well as online focus groups, and face-to-face interviews. The methodology used a deliberative approach, where the interviews and focus groups took participants through the key stages of the consumer decision-making framework of access, assess, and act.
The findings showed that overall consumers’ knowledge of legal services regulation is low.
“The qualitative behavioural research undertaken by YouGov has proved very useful to The Law Society. YouGov were also able to triangulate the results against quantitative results from separate surveys undertaken by the Society to reinforce the findings. The results were able to show the importance of the Society’s public legal education programmes. It also highlighted the difficulties that consumers have in assessing the non-price elements of legal work.”
- Law Society Research Unit
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