Two joint Validatum–Beaton Capital Australian seminars will launch the LegalDatum price benchmarking services for smaller law firms in Australia in Melbourne on 10 October and Brisbane on 15 October.

LegalDatum has released to the small and mid-tier law firm market a cloud-based resource that will provide law firms in Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand with reliable market data about what their competitors are charging and how their own fee levels and structures stack up.

Co-founder Richard Burcher: “For too long there has been a pricing information vacuum for solicitors in private practice, especially in the thousands of smaller firms. The public and SMEs have always been able to shop around for that information and now we are seeing the emergence of law firm comparison websites. It seemed to us that solicitors should have access to their own reliable and confidential pricing data source. This resource will be available to law firms only via LegalDatum in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.”

Based on five years of successful trials in New Zealand, with 40% of all New Zealand law firms participating, LegalDatum’s founders are confident their proven model delivers what firms are after – robust pricing data in large quantities that enables firms to make better-informed pricing decisions. LegalDatum is the result of collaboration between Validatum™, a leading international legal services pricing consultancy based in London and Beaton Capital, a leading independent advisory firm based in Australia and Hong Kong. Both have a long history of working with law firms.

The company has opened its platform to Australian and New Zealand law firms and its United Kingdom platform is about to go ‘live’.

Warren Riddell, Beaton Capital partner: “We have a significant new product development pipeline and our aim is to make LegalDatum the ‘go-to’ resource and online community for all small to mid-tier law firms pricing requirements. Critically, from a credibility perspective, this is a service developed by lawyers for lawyers.”

LegalDatum’s blog and fortnightly pricing newsletter are enjoying fast-growing support from practitioners.