Legal Marketing & PR

Future trends for solo practitioners

By Jim Hassett

After I posted last week?s piece on The End of Lawyers, Carol Bertsch, a solo practitioner in San Antonio Texas, submitted this comment:

I am a solo practitioner who serves individual consumers. I agree that my practice has changed and many who would have used my services a few years ago instead go to the Internet. Some of those who used the Internet to get legal services later come to me to sort out the unintended consequences that befell them because "guiding, advising, drafting, and problem-solving" are exactly what they needed in the first place...  Do any of the legal gurus out there include solo practitioners who serve consumers in their predictions?

I passed the question along to two of my favorite experts on business development for small practices: 

Carolyn Elefant  (author of the blog My Shingle) and Roger Glovsky (founder of LEXpertise, a collaboration site for lawyers).  They emailed back within a few hours (on a Sunday), and I found their responses so interesting that I decided they should appear in this separate post rather than be buried in the comments section.

First, Carolyn Elefant:

I agree that many who use non-lawyer services like LegalZoom are finding problems, because that service doesn't give you advice.  For example, if you go to LegalZoom and ask for an LLC, it will draft a great one.  But what LegalZoom won't do is tell you if an LLC was the way to go in the first place - or whether a partnership or corporation would have worked better for you.

The better online trend is what people like Stephanie Kimbro of Virtual Law Tech are pioneering - legally-guided unbundled services.  Stephanie offers unbundled legal services like corporations or wills; others with similar practices do uncontested divorce.  Clients procure these services entirely online, but what is different from LegalZoom is that an attorney offers advice and guides the process.  So an entity seeking incorporation services would order a "package."  The client then emails information about his business situation online and the lawyer reviews and makes recommendations about the appropriate form and drafts it.  The lawyer is able to offer inexpensive flat fees because of savings on overhead by being virtual and also streamlining the process with forms, standard email questions, etc...  The end result is incorporation that doesn't cost much more than LegalZoom but has the value add of a lawyer's attention.  I think that this kind of hybrid approach holds great appeal for consumers and lawyers.

Then, Roger Glovsky:

I agree with Carolyn 100%.  She described what I would call the new trend of ?value-added virtual services.?  You get the best of both worlds: streamlined production and delivery of legal documents along with high-quality legal advice and guidance.  I believe price competition will increase for all firms, large and small.  And all lawyers will need to leverage technology to increase efficiency and productivity to offset declining prices.

As for billing, the ?packaged? legal services that Carolyn describes will help lawyers to offer fixed fees.  I think there will still be opportunities for hourly billing, but there may be some changes in what types of matters or services clients are willing to pay for on an hourly basis.  There may also be more results-oriented premiums (or discounts) worked into the equation.  Now is a good time to experiment with alternative billing arrangements, even as a solo practitioner.

Full post as published by Legal Business Development on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).