In today’s global economy consumers have access to items and services in a way that was never seen prior. This ‘all-access’ pass to consumerism has often been associated with those of us in the ‘Y-Generation’ and our heightened consumer entitlement. However, based on the wide-spread adoption by all ages of people, it seems likely that the changes were tied closely to technological feasibility and in response to years of limited consumer choice.
On May 4, 2015, Expedia founder Richard Barton spoke at the American Bar Association’s National Summit on Innovation in Legal Services on this very issue. Expedia was a response to what Barton saw as information asymmetry in the task of booking a holiday. Prior to the creation of his site customers were reliant on a travel agent making decisions about what they felt best suited their client. Barton recognized the value in giving consumers the power to make their own decisions and removing the barriers that limited their ability to do so.
The fact that clients and consumers have a preference for feeling empowered when dealing with decisions impacting them is not in and of itself particularly ground-breaking. However, the recognition of our traditional consumer structures and the way they have limited such empowerment may be. I always envisioned that a lawyer’s actions would, for the most part, empower the client simply by assisting in the navigation of the legal system and providing info that allowed informed decision-making. However, with the changes we have seen in consumer practice, it may no longer be enough to simply write an opinion letter or have a client meeting to discuss legal options. The same clients that may have been satisfied with such work in the past may no longer feel this is sufficient.
Without a doubt law firms will be looking at options for how to best meet the wants and needs of their clients in an effort to hold or gain market share. While we cannot say with certainty what the evolution of the legal practice will entail, Richard Barton provided 3 “Consumer Laws of a Future Economy” that should guide decisions respecting change going forward. In a time with constant connectivity to an internet we all share, Barton believes consumers will demand the following: 1) if it can be known it will be known; 2) if it can be free it will be free; and 3) if it can be rated it will be rated. I for one will be considering these laws during our LawHacks project and future pitch to the legal dragons.
Keegan,
I really liked your take on consumer empowerment. I too thought being a “legal travel agent” for clients would empower them, but the lack of client involvement in much of what lawyers do may have the opposite effect.
Expedia allows you to create a custom vacation, you decide on the flight, the hotel, the car rental etc. – you can filter your options by cost and rating. Being actively involved in your outcome is empowering. Therefore, I see a future of more collaborative meetings with the client, where varying options are presented and decisions are made at each step. While this may already be the practice on very large files, I agree that a directive opinion letter or a basic client meeting simply will not cut it.
A good post Keegan, it raises some fundamental questions about the very nature of the legal services industry. A couple of thoughts & questions to consider regarding Barton’s 3 Consumer Laws as applied to legal practice:
“1) if it can be known it will be known;”
– This is a challenging one in law given that answers tend to be relative rather than categorial (A lawyer’s favourite answer to a “Yes” or “No” question? “It depends.”). That said, there are some interesting projects leveraging IBM’s Watson (see blueJ legal & Ross Intelligence) , in an attempt to have artificial intelligence learn certain fields of law.
Do you think that AI can ever truly “know” law sufficiently to exercise analytical reasoning and legal judgment?
“2) if it can be free it will be free; and”
I agree with this one up to a point. Barriers to access for public legal information are increasingly being struck down as the cost of reproduction in the digital age effectively becomes zero. This is fundamentally changing the role of lawyers from “gatekeepers of information” to “legal sherpas” (i.e. experienced guides that help you get to your destination).
How do you think free legal information will affect what lawyers can bill clients for? Put another way, where do lawyers add value when information is free?
“3) if it can be rated it will be rated.”
This one is also tricky, but definitely possible. There are some sites that offer client testimonials and reviews, but objective rating systems across law firms may be difficult in the absence of greater transparency (e.g. public disclosure of hourly billing rates).
How might building “Yelp for Lawyers” change the delivery of legal services for the better? How might it make things worse?
I absolutely love the “gatekeepers” vs “sherpas” distinction. That’s awesome.
Adam,
I love your comment and would like to attempt to answer your last two questions. I think that it is going to be difficult for lawyers in the future to bill clients for basic legal information. This information is too readily available on the internet and the younger generations have become too good at finding it. I had a personal experience with this while working this summer. A client had come to us and had clearly spent a great deal of time looking up his legal issue online and developed a basic understanding of the law. This then lead him to come to some conclusions on how we should proceed. Unfortunately, the client had misunderstood how the law applied to his particular situation. It was at this point that my principal lawyer had to explain to the client how the law worked concerning his predicament, and present him with the right options on how to proceed.
The internet can be a great resource but it can also provide very superficial information. The law is still quite complex and while technology is advancing, at this time, it is not advanced enough to provide in-depth answers to people’s legal issues. That is what lawyers are trained to do. So I definitely believe that while we may no longer be “Gate keepers” as such, our role as “Sherpas” is still going strong.
In response to your second question regarding “Yelp for Lawyers” I think it can be very disastrous for individual lawyer’s careers. The law has always been a zero sum game, where one person wins and another losses. Granted, this has changed in recent years with the emergence of mediation and alternative dispute resolution, but invariably you are always going to have someone leaving feeling hurt. While this may have been because of a lawyer’s bad performance, it may also have simply been because of the client’s position. The difficulty is that clients may not always understand that their lawyer worked as hard as possible for them but that the law was simply not on their side. Particularly in areas such as family law where the emotions are so incredibly high and the law is fairly standard from case to case. Therefore, they may take to the internet and unduly criticize their lawyer leaving a permanent unwarranted stain on their record.
Thought provoking blog post. I hope you don’t mind me sharing my 2 cents.
I believe if you are to follow principles in business it should to focus on providing 1) better marketing 2) better branding 3) better client care. Businesses that do these things tend to thrive and the ones that don’t tend to not thrive. When you are in the law profession one would hope that you are somewhat insulated from these principles because you are providing a very skilled service, like a doctor does for example, but in the presence of increased competition these principles become more important to follow. Doctors tend to be a limited supply these days so they probably get away with not having to follow these principles all that much.
There is an old saying, paraphrasing ~ “no one ever got rich assuming the general public is smart.” In reality the amount of effort and energy needed to learn something complex is not something the common person would care to try to learn. On top of the energy and time required, the more important an issue is translates into more pressure for the person to do something right rather than terribly wrong so even if someone, somehow had the time and energy to try to learn something would they really want to risk doing it wrong or coming to the wrong conclusion? Probably not. I am sure a few will try though -with mixed results. Not the majority though, the majority of people don’t have the energy or will or desire to be students of law.