Net Q & A

Question of the Month: June 2001

Answer

 

	Lower their overhead, thus enabling them to lower their fees.
	Make themselves more attractive to clients in a number of other ways, including making themselves more convenient to deal with.
	Unbundle some or all of their services, thus again lowering their fees and making them more attractive to some potential clients.
	Expand their income by reaching more clients, including many who presently do not hire lawyers.

Susskind uses the phrase "latent legal market" to include not just middle to low income clients, but corporate clients, some of whom he believes are not being served as well as they might be by the present system of delivering legal services. My article at the LawMarketing Portal focuses on Susskind's latent legal market concept as it relates to corporate clients.

The eLawyering project focuses on another part of Susskind's latent legal market, middle to low income Americans, people who could afford to pay something for legal services, but presently don't. The eLawyering project is premised on the beliefs that:

1. These Americans deserve better legal representation than they are presently receiving.

2. At the same time, many lawyers who would like to serve the middle to lower income market are having difficulty making ends meet. They need new clients, but can't profitably find and provide legal services to this market through conventional means.

3. Technology is the key to reaching this new market in a way that not just benefits many new clients, but is profitable.

Richard Susskind gave The Law Librarian an interview on this topic. Here is an excerpt:

I think my ideas about the future of legal services are often misunderstood. People say that the kind of service I have in mind is nowhere near as effective, impressive and useful as that of a lawyer.

I am not sure that will always be the case but, without delving into a dispute, my point is the kind of practical legal guidance I have in mind is surely better than having nothing at all. So I am not saying that online legal guidance systems belonging to the latent legal market are a better form of legal service than a traditional one-to-one consultative advisory service delivered by a top class expert, I am saying that it is the only way that I can envisage meeting the vast amount of unmet legal need that there is in society.
. . .
I would say, in summary, that the future of legal service would be divided into three: the high end work will continue to be the preserve of traditional lawyers acting in the normal way with streamlining through technology; the routine and repetitive work will be systematised and commoditised and be available online; and thirdly the vast number of instances of unmet legal need will be to some extent tackled through the availability of online legal guidance which isn't in any sense a competitor to conventional legal advice but which is a marked improvement over no legal guidance at all.

The criticism that most lawyers level at my analysis is that legal guidance online is not as good as conventional legal services. I have never said anywhere that legal guidance online is in fact better than a conventional service. I am simply suggesting that there are not enough lawyers and legal process in the current system to go round; so we have to think of new ways to make the law work.
. . .

Another problem people often identify in the theory is the personal service element of the legal service which they rightly recognise can't be simulated through technology. We were talking earlier about new moves to commodotise divorce and the negative reaction to that in some quarters. Some matrimonial lawyers do indeed present a formidable case. They will say to me that 'much of what we do as divorce lawyers is not so much give legal advice, it is actually independent counsel that we provide in a legal context - we offer a shoulder to cry on and access to someone who is intelligent with no axe to grind and can impartially guide a client through a difficult time'. And they rightly say that no technology can today simulate this. But I often come back with this counter point: it is very common today for divorce lawyers when they interview for the first time a woman who has been physically abused and they hear of a dreadful series of really intolerable abuses to ask 'Why did you not come to me sooner?' or 'How could you withstand such treatment.?' And a very common response from the client is 'Well, I am not the breadwinner in the house and so I would have had no entitlement to any income if we got a divorce', or they say that the house is not in their name so they wouldn't have anywhere to live and with no money and no house how would they look after the children. So they are hindered by all manner of misconceptions. Wouldn't it be better with a simple consultation with a service available through television if such abused women could have been briefed a number of years earlier, just by pressing simple buttons, which answered questions such as what happens to the children, what happens to my income, what happens to the house. These individuals would not necessarily have their divorce completed online. Not at all. But they would actually have been encouraged to consult their lawyers in a more timely way, at a more appropriate time, and have avoided so many of the problems that may have occurred in the ensuing years. So the latent market refers not just to the unmet legal need I referred to earlier but is also relevant to bringing people to their lawyers at the appropriate time in the life cycle of their problems and affairs.

The latent legal market is what consultant Tom Peters has referred to as "baking a new pie." In other words, recognizing and catering to a NEW market, not just competing more fiercely for an existing market. Serving  this new legal market has the potential to help the Bar not just do good and do well at the same time.

Jerry Lawson