Miscellaneous

New Site Enables Any Lawyer to Get Bulk Discounts

By Robert Ambrogi

Anyone who has ever shopped at a warehouse discount store knows that buying in bulk can save you money. A new Web site extends that concept to lawyers, enabling even solo attorneys to buy goods and services at bulk discounts. And to help build up the critical mass of buyers needed to achieve those discounts, the site uses the power of social media.

Called GroupESQ, the just-launched site aims to deliver group-buying power to all lawyers, without regard to the size of firm they work in. As but one example of a deal already offered, the CLE provider MCLEZ is offering either its California or New York $99 “Super Bundle” for $49 through GroupESQ.

The way this works is that each deal requires a minimum number of buyers in order to come effective. So, for the CLE deal described above, it requires 35 attorneys to sign up before midnight on May 23 in order to go through.

As a buyer, if you see a deal you like, you submit a purchase order. If the minimum number of buyers is reached, your credit card is charged and you receive a voucher for the purchase. If the minimum is not reached, you are charged nothing. You can withdraw an order anytime before it closes.

Now here is where the site taps into the power of social media. Buyers are encouraged to use Facebook and Twitter to help drum up interest in a deal and reach the requisite number of purchasers. So if the deal you want needs five more buyers to go through, send it out to your network of friends and colleagues.

This is a win-win-win — a win for the lawyer, who gets a good deal; a win for GroupESQ, which gets its users helping to promote it; and a win for the vendors, who get their customers helping them sell.

GroupESQ is owned and operated by LawLink, a social network for the legal community.

Full post as published by Lawsites on May 14, 2010 (boomark / email).