Legally On The Move: Strategy, Scaling, Sunshine and Success from Ibiza – Michael Hanney – E7

You can hear Rob and Michael discussing:

Connect with Michael here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhanney/

reviewsolicitors.co.uk/

Transcript

1:11  

Welcome to the legally speaking podcast recording live here in Ibiza. And I’m delighted to be joined by name, title and organisation. Michael Hanney, CEO of review solicitors, sure are, and let’s get into it. What do you do? Well, the last couple of days, I’ve been networking, but normally I run the review solicitors platform. We’re a legal review site helping law firms to collect reviews. We’ve got about 4000

1:39  

well over 4000 law firms who are using our platform. So I like to say that we’re the biggest, and we’ve sort of taken a few years to get there. But you know, we, we support firms, and we, we do a good job of it, yeah, and we’ve had the privilege of actually doing a collaboration with you recently as well, and really see the value in what you’re doing. But for law firms that might be new to you, why is this so important, and why have you grown so so quickly over recent years? Well, I think it’s sort of a combination of things. I think we’ve all as consumers become sort of very acclimatised to being able to read reviews and sort of know what we’re going to be purchasing before we purchase it. So, you know, if you’re trying to book a holiday or a hotel, you know, you expect to be able to read reviews, and if there’s no reviews there, you sort of think, what’s going on with this hotel. But I think COVID sort of had a bit of an impact with, you know, law firms sort of suddenly realising that actually we need to have a bit more of an online presence. And then you had the SRA s pilot scheme for reviews as well. So all the regulators are sort of pushing for law firms to be actively collecting reviews. You know, that level of transparency is really important. And look, it’s no hidden secret that a lot of people will be give me a review write this so, you know, what makes a good, authentic review that, you know, when people actually read it, there’s real credibility behind it, sure. I mean, you sort of got different types of reviews. You know, it’s always nice just to have some sort of positive feedback, you know, from from a client, even something as good as, you know, service was great. You know, that sort of goes a long way as a thank you to that individual. But in terms of, you know, when you really do have a good sort of rapport with your client, when you are, you know, taking the time to really understand them, and you’re helping them in that sort of distressed moment of their life, they will take the time to leave you sort of quite a substantial review. You know, you sort of talk in 200 300 characters, and it really sort of delves into the personal aspect of what they felt was, was valued as, as what you gave us as your service, yeah, and obviously we’re recording live here in IBI. Throughout the lawyers retreat, you’ve been partnering with Kate and Kirsty. Why have you decided to be involved in the lawyers retreat? And what benefits have you got from being here? I think it’s really good for me, you know, I’ve spent a lot of my time, you know, sort of in amongst my own team, sort of focusing on driving things forward and whatnot. So it’s good for me to sort of get out and actually sort of speak and in real life, rather than over the internet and LinkedIn and everything to people that you know I already have a relationship with, but it’s also nice to meet other people as well and sort of build my build my network a bit more. Yeah, and I guess from again, coming back to review solicitors and what your what you’re doing, if law firms are actually looking at themselves and thinking, wow, we don’t have any reviews, where do they start? Well, I mean, you don’t have to sort of start with reviews listers. I think the first sort of starting point is to decide that your firm sort of values client reviews, and you sort of want to go in that direction. You know, Google’s sort of AI features and various sort of chat GPT and whatnot. They’ve come along quite quickly in the last 18 months. And, you know, it’s become more important for law firms to be collecting reviews. You sort of seen the AI generated stuff when you when you search for anything now popping up in Google. So the sort of starting point, I would say, is, you know, have a chat with people internally. You know, shall we start collecting reviews? Have a look. Have you sort of done anything historically? Maybe you sent some sort of paper.

5:00  

Questionnaires out sort of 1010, years ago, and they’re sat in a drawer somewhere, you know. Okay, we’ll look back. What have we what have we done there? And once you’re ready to sort of say, yes, we want to do it, you know, have a look at different platforms out there. You know, we’re sort of sat here, you know, we do a good job. Google’s out there as well. People, you know, FIFO trust pilot as various platforms, you know, decide which one’s right for you. And I guess if people wanted to know more about review solicitors, what would you say are some of the USPS or things that you do that would make that make you a good fit for them? Well, I mean, we specialise solely in sort of the legal services market, so we understand where maybe other platforms don’t that collecting reviews can be somewhat difficult when it comes to, you know, the types of clients that are out there, and, more importantly, people on the other side of the matter. I think one of the common fears are, you know, what do we do if we get a negative review, or, you know, a defamatory review, you know, how do we get rid of it? And with review solicitors, you know, we have sort of instant removal for those types of reviews, which is really important actually, because you don’t want to have to sit there, you know, with a knee jerk reaction, with five partners going we need to get rid of this. We need to get rid of this. We need to get rid of it. If you do get a bad review or a defamatory review, you just want to be able to deal with it. And that’s it. Move on. There we go. And from your own perspective, obviously, you’re the CEO of a fast growing and you know, fast number of reviews out there, what’s been one takeaway you’ve got from the lawyers retreat, specifically, maybe a practical or tactical thing that you’re perhaps going to apply to your business, or something that’s been reminded to you why you should be out of the office environment. I think, sort of the most sort of striking point that’s come through from this is it’s not just me who has problems with my company.

6:36  

I think it’s important to recognise that sort of everyone’s going through that struggle. And you know, just by sort of reaching out and being around being around other people and even just sort of talking about things, you sort of get those new ideas and inspiration that you probably wouldn’t have got if you weren’t here. It’s very easy, I think, to become sort of, you know, not being able to see through the trees, and sort of coming out here and just having that sort of breathing space to do things that, you know, putting all the emails to one side for a couple of days, and just networking with people, it goes a long way. Yeah, really. Well said. Well, look, it’s been an absolute pleasure hosting you on the legally speaking podcast. And if people do want to know more about review solicitors and what you’re getting up to, where can they go? Feel free to shout out any websites or any social media handles. We’ll share them this episode for you too. Yeah, fantastic. Cool. So if you want to learn more about review solicitors, it’s reviewslisters.co.uk,

7:21  

or hit me up on LinkedIn, drop me a message, contact anyone at the company, and we’ll sort of invite you in. You can have a cup of tea and have a chat about reviews, absolutely. Well, look from live from Ibiza. Thanks again for joining me. But for now, from all of us over and out.