When I was 5 years old, I would stand at the entrance of my parents’ grocery store and greet the incoming customers by offering them a complementary piece of candy. It has been said that I was the original Wal-Mart greeter, though this claim has never been verified. Working in my parent’s family owned and operated business made me aware of the daily plight of an entrepreneur that fights to survive and aims to thrive.
There is a point to this anecdote – just like entrepreneurs, lawyers have to decide whether they will provide better quality service or lower their cost of service in an effort to be successful. Given our legal system’s current access to justice issue, I believe that the better option is to reduce the cost of legal services as this will benefit both lawyers and clients.
The legal profession is a service based industry and customer service is vital to acquiring and retaining clients. After reading sections of Richard Susskind’s book, Tomorrow’s Lawyers, it became apparent that clients’ needs are not being met, which is largely due to the cost of legal services. Susskind suggests that “[o]ur focus should be on helping our clients to meet their formidable more-for-less challenge rather than obstinately holding on to outdated, inefficient working practices” (28). It is no secret that many individuals do not have the financial resources to address their legal issues, but what puzzles me is why more hasn’t been done to respond to this problem.
There are a number of ways that lawyers can reduce legal fees to attract more clients and Susskind provides valuable insight about embarking on this endeavour. The author discusses his conception of “bespoke” legal work and explains this concept as a lawyer viewing a client’s circumstances as being unique, which requires the lawyer to handcraft a legal solution that specifically focuses on the individual matter at issue. While Susskind believes that some legal issues arise that require “the application of acute legal minds and the handcrafting of tailored solutions…much less legal work requires bespoke treatment” and can be handled with a standardized approach (24). To illustrate his point, Susskind uses the example of an employment contract. He explains that if a bespoke approach was adopted, the contract would be drafted from scratch for each client, whereas if a standardized approach was implemented, a routine process and template or precedent would be used for numerous clients. By using the former approach, the lawyer expends a great deal of time on each contract and each client receives a substantial bill, which excludes a number of potential clients who cannot afford such a service. However, by using the latter approach, the lawyer initially invests time in drafting a contract to serve as a template and each client pays a reasonable bill, which attracts more clients as the service is more affordable.
Susskind’s views on the bespoke and standardized approaches were echoed by a founding partner of relatively new law firm that I had the pleasure of meeting with recently. The lawyer explained that some legal professionals generate money by reinventing the wheel each time a client walks through their door, thus implementing a “bespoke” approach. He informed me that this approach is nearing extinction as the majority of people cannot afford this type of service. He went on to share his method of using templates to generate money by offering his legal services at a reasonable cost to obtain more clients, thus employing a standardized approach. His successful implementation of the standardized approach causes me to believe that it would be better to cast a wider net and capture more people by reducing the cost of certain legal services, as this would result in a win-win situation.
Thanks for your thoughts on this Neila. I agree with you, and the lawyer you spoke with, that firms relying on the ‘bespoke’ approach are unlikely to see continued success in today’s marketplace. With the emergence of websites offering standardized documents and the accessibility of information online its evident that not everyone is remaining loyal to their ‘family lawyer’ in a way they once did. I think many of the firms do partake in standardizing their documents, or at the very least using prior work as drafts for current clients. However, it will be interesting to see how far this goes as the competition and expectations of clients continues to increase.
This is a very interesting transition in the legal profession Neila. I completely agree with you that this is a win-win situation. It would be better to cast a wider net and capture more people by reducing the cost of certain legal services. Moving on to template-format documents that can be shaped to the client’s interests without having to start from scratch is a good use of resource and time. The more efficient the method the better.
However, it does worry me to think that if these documents are in such high demand by the clients and a general template can be created and administered by the lawyers, what would happen if this was available to the general public via the web. If the most common problems that lawyers deal with for clients, can be taken and generic templates can be created through a self service portal online and made available to the public, the future of the legal profession would be in trouble. This would demonstrate a lack of need for lawyers for every-day legal issues.
As wonderful as efficiency for the client is, it comes at a cost, and that is devaluing the importance and the usefulness of a lawyer. This also poses other ramifications for the legal sector that would need to be addressed. Thus I think that efficiency for clients is important but should be pursued with caution having regard to the interest of the lawyers.
“If the most common problems that lawyers deal with for clients can be taken and generic templates can be created throgh a self service portal online and made available to the public, the future of the legal profession would be in trouble.”
It’s already happened! It’s called LegalZoom!
Are we in trouble? Or will we adapt and come out stronger?