eLawyering Blog : Online Legal Services : DirectLaw : Document Automation, Web-Enabled Document Assembly, Virtual Lawyering

The legal profession has witnessed the rise of new players that are disruptive of existing patterns of law practice.

First came LegalZoom, AVVO, TotalAttorneys, Rocketlawyer, MyLawyer (our company), and Law Pivot, disrupters that are having an impact on the way legal services are identified and delivered to the broad middle class.

Now comes AttorneyFee.com that holds promise of making legal fees more transparent.

For many years I have been critical of the fact that lawyers charge widely differing legal fees for the same work. In a study I was involved at the University of Maryland Law school some years ago, we discovered that for simple family law actions, such as a no-fault divorce, lawyers would charge any where from $500.00 to $3,000.00 for essentially the same work. This variation in legal fees for the same work tasks is another cause of the distrust that the average consumer has of the legal profession.

AttorneyFee.com is a welcome development for law firms that are already experimenting with fixed fee legal services delivered online. Law firms that are using online delivery technology will in fact have a competitive advantage over law firms that use higher cost productive methods. Sites like AttorneyFee.com expand the reach of these firms by giving them another channel to advertise their fee information to consumers.

I registered my Maryland virtual law firm at AttorneyFee.com yesterday. I found the interface to be clean and simple and the registration process easy.

My only criticism was that there was no field to display a law firm's web address -- only an email address and a telephone number. This means that an interested prospect will have to contact the law firm to get more information by phone or email, without the opportunity of easily clicking through to the law firm's web site.

In my case, the page describing the pricing of my services does not provide enough information to the consumer about the scope of my services. There is no place to indicate that we offer "limited legal services" for pro se parties exclusively. For a new company that prides itself on transparency, this feature is less than transparent.

Moreover, when my firm comes up, a form also pops up that enables the prospect to ask for a free consultation. Except in our case, we don't provide free consultations. Since we sell a legal advice service by the question for a modest flat fee, offering a "free consultation" is not consistent with our business model. 

When I asked Robert Komaiko, one of the co-founders of AttorneyFee about these issues, he said they have other features planned for the site but they felt it was important to launch the site, get feedback, learn, and revise. As a believer in the lean startup method of starting a company, which is now all the rage in Silicon Valley, I agreed with Robert that it was important to get the concept launched and to work out the kinks later. There is certainly enough benefits and features already built into the site to see if this concept gets any traction. Better to launch the service , get feedback, and revise, as opposed to waiting for a year, adding every feature imaginable, and then discovering that consumers have no interest in the service.

AttorneyFee  using a proprietary search technology,has already  listed the prices that over 20,000 law firms are charging on their web sites.  The company plans to have over 70,000 law firm sites indexed within a relatively short period of time. This information alone will provide a useful consumer resource for comparing fees charged by law firms for similar tasks.

Some lawyers are bound to be critical of this web service as it is another indication of the commercialization of the legal profession but as Beibei Que, the other co-founder of AttorneyFee, and its CEO, told me: 

We have all known that this moment was coming for a long time.  The profession can no longer limp along with one foot in the for-profit economy and another in a quasi-clergy role.  If we wish to reap the benefits of the for-profit economy, we must be prepared to comport ourselves like private market actors, and this means not retreating from conversations about price or concealing them behind closed doors.

AttorneyFee.com is a welcome addition to the family of new disrupters shaking the legal profession to its core.

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LegalZoom has been beta testing a concept which links its marketing capabilities to a network of law firms that offer legal services under the LegalZoom brand. With some state bar associations accusing LegalZoom of  the unauthorized practice of law,  it might makes sense for the company to seek deeper alliances with networks of attorneys who are able to offer a full and ethically compliant legal service. Solos and small law firms, leveraging off the visibility and prominence of the LegalZoom brand, could reduce their marketing costs and enable these firms to better capture consumers who are part of the “latent legal market”  on the Internet. It could be a win/win for both parties.

Unfortunately, linking the capital and management resources of profit-making organization with private law firms is almost impossible in the United States, given the regulatory framework that governs law practice. Unlike, the United Kingdom, which is in the process of deregulating the legal profession, enabling profit-making companies, from banks  and insurance companies to retail chains like Tesco,  to actually own a law firm, and/or split legal fees with a non-law firm, these practices in the US are strictly taboo.

In the US, law directories can charge a flat marketing fee for a listing, but sharing legal fees with a marketing organization can get you disbarred.

During the dot-com boom around 1999-2000, a company emerged by the name of AmeriCounsel that tried to create a hybrid organizational structure similar to the LegalZoom experiment. The company sought to enable a network of attorneys to offer legal services at a fixed and reasonable price and to mediate between the consumer and the law firm in terms of guaranteeing the quality of the legal services offered. The company failed during the dot-com bust for various reasons, including lack of financing, but on the way to failure, secured some opinions from state bar associations that blessed their model and provides a blue print for hybrid delivery systems which combine the expertise of a law firm with the marketing, management, and technological resources of a non-law firm.

One such opinion was issued by the Nassau County Bar Association New York State.

The Bar Association reasoned that the AmeriCounsel scheme was permissible because:

[S]ince AmeriCounsel does not charge attorneys any fee and since AmeriCounsel does not “recommend” or “promote” the use of any particular lawyer ’s services, it does not fall within the purview of DR 2-103(B) or (D). Rather, AmeriCounsel is a form of group advertising permitted by the Code of Professional Responsibility and by ethics opinions interpreting the Code.

In this model, AmeriCounsel provided technology and administrative services to link the client with the lawyer, but the law firm made no payment to AmeriCounsel. Instead, a separate administrative/technology fee was paid by the consumer to AmericCounsel for using the web site and gaining access to the lawyer. (This is not a practical scheme in today’s web environment, in my opinion), Moreover, AmeriCounsel did not choose the lawyer. The client was able to compare the credentials of different attorneys and choose their own lawyer. Thus no legal referral was involved, which would not be permitted in New York, as only an approved non-profit organization can make legal referrals.

In my opinion, this model, forced on AmeriCounsel, by the Rules of Professional Responsibility, is cumbersome, hard to implement, and was not economically viable for AmeriCounsel. Perhaps this was one of the causes of its failure.

Almost a decade later, companies that want to enter into this kind of hybrid relationship with lawyers, have to follow the same rule structure, as the ABA Model Rules of Professional Responsibility as the rules have not changed in any significant way. changed.  It will be interesting to see whether the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission, which was set up just last year, will address these issues at all.

Perhaps there should be a “safe harbor” that enables organization’s like LegalZoom to experiment with new patterns of legal service delivery that could operate for a limited period of time in a specific state, like California, The experience would be evaluated carefully as a basis for rule and policy change. The evaluation would be aimed to see if client's interests are compromised in any way, and whether the delivered legal service is less expensive, without compromising the quality of legal service.

Instead of creating legal profession regulatory policies that are based on the legal profession's idea about what is good for the consumer, policy could be based on real experience and facts. Experimentation is good. It leads to change, and in other industries improvement of methods and approaches over a period of time.

Of course, I don’t believe that this will ever happen in the US, at least not in my professional lifetime.

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Jay Fleischman, who authors the LegalPracticePro Blog, recently had a blog post where he wished "Death to the Virtual Law Firm." His problem is not with the idea of lawyers practicing law over the Internet, but that the term "virtual" is confusing because it connotes that the lawyer really isn't present. In reality, the virtual lawyer is very present as the producer of legal services, perhaps even more so than a traditional lawyer, because there is the potential for 24/7 accessibility.

He argues that this term confuses the consuming public and potential clients.

In my opinion, the idea of a "virtual law firm"  is becoming a way of describing a law firm that delivers legal services in a new and innovative way. The average consumer whose purchasing behaviour  has changed because of the proliferation of non-lawyer web sites on the Internet, such as LegalZoom, understands very well that when a law firm uses the terms, "virtual" or "online" that the firm is offering a service that is often more reasonably priced, more convenient to use, and often delivered at a faster response time than is usual.  Our market research shows that when consumers see the term "virtual law firm", that it means that a law firm is willing to offer legal services in a non-traditional way, usually  "unbundled legal services," and at a fixed price.

Sometimes a term moves into common usage with unanticipated consequences and a different meaning than its common meaning.  For law firms offering online legal services, this is a way for them to differentiate themselves from law firms that offer legal services in a traditional office setting who eschew digital methods.

It is a marketing message that is powerful, because at the present time there are very few lawyers who have learned to harness the power of the Internet to increase their productivity and keep their prices affordable. "Virtual lawyering" communicates a message to consumers that this is not your "grandparents" law firm.

I doubt that consumers think that a virtual lawyer is someone who is just an avatar in http://www.secondlife.com. At some point in the future, delivering legal services online will become common. At the present time it is not, and the online law firms, that use this moniker, are trying to differentiate themselves from from the rest of the pack. There are very few law firms reaching out to the broad middle class with affordable legal services and too few law firms using the Internet as a platform for the delivery of legal services. "Virtual law firms" represent a new category of law firm that are reaching out to a "latent" market of consumers with a new value proposition.

Because the method of delivering legal services over the Internet is shaped by technology, and the underlying technology needs to be carefully examined and evaluated in terms of whether legal services delivered online are ethically compliant, it is useful to be able to treat this activity as a separate category, at least for the purpose of discussion.

Perhaps in the future, lawyers who deliver legal services over the Internet will refer to themselves as "digital lawyers", or "Online Lawyers", and these terms will become synonyms for "virtual lawyers".  For now, the label, "Virtual law firm" and "Virtual lawyers" is a useful way of framing this emerging activity so its benefits and deficiencies can be further examined. Without precision in definition, it is easy for any lawyer who works from home, and who never sees a client face to face, and who simply uses email, to call themselves a "virtual lawyer." 

I think that the Wikipedia definitions of a "virtual law firm" and "elawyering" , are useful as a starting point for understanding this new category of law firm. The only way to advance the "state of the art" is to recognize that the Internet as a platform for the delivery of legal services is something unique that requires careful examination and assessment. That exploration doesn't get very far if we simply lump all law firms into the same category.

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Volume IV of the recently released 2010 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report is devoted to Web and Communication Technology. A section on E-Lawyering reports that 14% of Respondents over all, and 19% of solo practitioners, report that they have a virtual law office or virtual law practice. This question in the survey that deals with with the question of whether a law firm has a 
"virtual law practice" was framed in terms of whether the attorney primarily interacts with clients using Internet-based software and other electronic communications software.

In my opinion, these self-reported responses from attorneys are not meaningful and are much too high to be accurate. The reported numbers are not useful in understanding where the legal profession is in terms of adopting the concept of a "virtual law practice." The reality is that the adoption rate is much lower.

The ABA Law Practice Management Section's eLawyering Task Force (disclosure: I am Co-Chair of the eLawyering Task Force),  defines a "virtual law practice" as one that offers to its clients a secure client portal, as part of the law firm's web site, where the client can log in with a user name and password, and interact with their attorney, as well as consume other online legal services. A virtual law practice is more than simply communicating with clients by email and never meeting with clients face-to-face. In order to have a "virtual law practice" by our definition,  you have to have a web site and a portion of that web site has to be dedicated as a secure portal for clients. Without this distinction, many law firms can claim that they are "virtual law firms" simply because they use email extensively, as the ABA Study seems to imply, giving the impression that integration of Internet technologies as part of their legal service delivery system is much higher than it actually is.

For example, in another question, the survey participants were asked whether the firm has a web site. The solo practitioner group responded that only 52.1% had a web site, but this is the same group that responded that 19% has a "virtual law practice."  By our definition, if you don't have a web site you don't have a "virtual law practice." The only explanation for the discrepancy in these numbers is that the question of " Do you have a virtual law practice?" was phrased so broadly that more law firms where included in the category than should be.

Another question that was asked to determine what kinds of online legal services were offered by the firm was: "Does your law firm offer online document preparation?" 11.4% of solo firms reported that they did. Again this number doesn't make any sense. There were 149 respondents in the Solo category. Only 52.1% actually had a web site, or 77 firms had a web site from which online document preparation could be offered. 11.4% would suggest that only approximately 8 law firms could offer this service. Not only is this number too small to make any meaningful projections in terms of the total number of solo practitioners in the US (more than 400,000), but it is also likely to be misleading. Here's why:

The technological options for offering online document assembly for solo practitioners are very limited. One option is to provide fillable Adobe . pdf forms. But you can't easily use a fillable Adobe .pdf to create a text document such as a Will or a Shareholder's Agreement. The major document assembly vendors such as HotDocs, DealBuilder, and Exari have systems that support online document assembly but the price for licensing these systems is much too expensive for the average solo practitioner. Wizilegal, a new entrant to the field, provides a new low cost web-enabled document assembly solution, but our market information suggest that they have only a small number of users. (Disclosure: DIrectLaw, which sponsors this blog, is one of the few web-enabled document assembly solutions that is offered at a price that a solo practitioner can afford.)

In short, the question about the use of online document assembly should have been phrased much more narrowly, with a field in the questionnaire that would require that the law firm indicate what platform is being used to support online document assembly, and whether it is a third party vendor, or whether the programming was done in-house. My sense is that if the question were asked properly, the number of law firms offering online document assembly would be much lower than actually reported.

Finally, 3% of respondents report that their firms offer expert system on their web sites (compared with 1% in the 2009 survey), including 7% of the large firm respondents. Based on our surveys of law firms from solos to large law firms, this percentage seems very high to me. It is very rare that I come across a law firm web site that actually offers an "expert system" for use by its clients, and I review or check out literally thousands of law firm web sites a year.  Most lawyers don't even know what an "expert system" is! I would like to see a more precise question, where the respondent is required to name the kind of "expert system" they are offering and the url of the web site where it is offered, so that a reviewer could more closely examine what the law firm represents they are doing is in fact the case.

I think that it is commendable that the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center now has a separate section of its annual report just on web and communication technology. The platform for the delivery of legal services is gradually shifting from traditional face-to-face office practice to the Web, but my sense is that the the pace of adaptation is much slower than is being officially reported. This is understandable in a profession that views its core identity as one where clients are dealt with primarily face-to-face. 

On the other hand, our own research on consumer preferences suggests that more than half of consumers would like their law firm to have an online virtual component. Thus, the legal profession continues to lag behind what other service industries offer to their clients and customers online.

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The American Bar Association Journal has started a new Legal Rebels project to get lawyers thinking about how to change the legal profession. The Journal recognizes that the legal profession is undergoing structural change accelerated by the current recession, and that as the economy emerges from this recession, the landscape of the legal profession will be very different from the one that we have now know. 

Searching for new ways of practicing law, the Journal will profile 50 or so lawyers who are demonstrating new ways of serving clients by expanding their markets, delivering legal services in a different ways, or creating new styles of legal practice. The plan is to tell the stories of these lawyers through a variety of social media channels using text, pictures, audio and video.

A colleague of mine,  Jeffrey Hughes, was named today in the first group of profiles for his innovative and ground-breaking work in combining a law practice within the context of a coffee house under the Legal Grind brand, serving "legal counsel" and good coffee in a community setting. Legal Grind is an excellent example of delivering "unbundled" or "limited legal services" at prices that people can afford.

By the way, I was honored to also be included in this first group of profiles.

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