Helping clients use lawyers less

We have long argued that lawyers were rather missing the point when suggesting to their clients that, as lawyers, they wished to work more closely in a partnership with them in order to solve problems; without realising that they were a part of the problem themselves.

The stark reality is that lawyers’ clients regard the instruction of their own lawyers as ‘a distress purchase’ and, according to Richard West, our Head of Liability and Innovation, it is probable that lawyers’ clients do not want to instruct lawyers at all.

We suggested that the pedalling of legal services to clients in a way that created an unnecessary addiction on their lawyers needed to stop. As a result we advocated that a realistic goal for clients and their lawyers would be to work together to deal efficiently with claims and any litigation arising. Doing so would then significantly reduce legal spend and, in almost every circumstance those clients’ indemnity spend.

We have established a Core Principle of helping clients to use all lawyers less. To demonstrate that approach we have created an award-winning virtual lawyer called KLAiM, which empowers clients and enables their teams to become less reliant on their lawyers. KLAiM is also complemented by our overarching Kennedys Toolkit – a range of client-facing products designed to meet that goal and to reflect the challenges faced by clients today.

Our innovative and award winning products are focused on improving risk management, investigation techniques and fraud detection, as well as conducting litigation without the need to instruct a lawyer. We equip clients with the means to make their own legal decisions and to do so earlier in the claims process. In addition, we provide clients with the capability to learn from and improve their own dispute resolution and litigation processes.

Over the last five years, we have developed KLAiM and rolled that virtual lawyer into some of the largest UK insurers. KLAiM is being developed in Australia, Hong Kong and the United States.

The success of KLAiM, as Richard points out in the video below, is two-fold. For clients, they achieve instant savings on their indemnity spend and have access to the aggregated knowledge of 400 experts with thousands of years’ legal career knowledge. For us, it increases market share, develops stronger ties with clients – and cures those clients of their unnecessary addiction to legal services.