More Clients Doing Their Own Lawyering? What Lawyers Should Do In Response
I read with interest a recent posting at MSN entitled More People Acting As Their Own Lawyers. The posting reflects a growing inability of the middle class to hire lawyers to represent them. The article cites examples of people who could not come up with $1,000 retainers and elected instead to represent themselves.
Having run a virtual law firm for the better part of a year, and overseen the creation of a web based portal Makinglaweasy.com to educate the general public on law, I have a unique perspective on this phenomena. Many people contact me because they need a lawyer. As the point person at my virtual law firm, I often speak with potential clients initially to try to understand their case and see if a lawyer can help them. Seldom do I talk with anyone who sounds like they could represent themselves in court. The most glaring disconnect in addition to a lack of legal training is they often lack a feel for what a judge will find relevant in their case and throw out random arguments. Take for example support or custody cases. Many of the potential clients I speak with describe their ex as being mean, on drugs, and/or unreliable. My sense for speaking to my family lawyer about this type of call frequently is judges do not have time to determine if these allegations are true and will give them little weight in a court room without more than an allegation. This means the person making the allegation needs hard evidence of this complaint. If the child who is the underlying focus of the hearing is possibly in danger, judges would also rather have a state agency like CYF do an investigation than hear parents pleading for help and filtering out whether their allegations are true. An experienced family lawyer, will understand the culture of the court room better than a lay person and is likely in a better position to advocate for a client in front of a judge. This is just one example of where lay people can get in trouble in court and underperform a trained lawyer. There are many others.
What is more interesting to me than bashing people for not hiring lawyers, is bashing lawyers for not understanding the needs of their clients or potential clients. Identifying the right type of lawyer for a $750 - $1,500 matter is very difficult for most clients. Once a lawyer is hired and the retainer if forked over, many times it becomes impossible for the client to get in touch with that lawyer again until the hearing is about to occur. If the client is unsuccessful with their case, they will often feel like their lawyer was unresponsive to them and did not try to learn their case. Since the money is paid up front, they often feel very powerless in this situation and victimized by their lawyer.
I believe the solution to this problem starts with coming up with better ways for clients to find the right lawyers on line. This means lawyers need to do a better job of being able to be found online for areas of law which they have focussed their legal practices in (as opposed to overselling their ability to handle work in many different areas of law). If done correctly, once found by a client, these lawyers should then come up with less expensive alternatives for payment than large retainers. Once found and being more affordable, a final piece of this puzzle is giving clients the ability to communicate with their lawyers when they need them online so the additional costs of missing work, travel time to an office, and the helpless feeling of not being able to contact their lawyer is removed. With better communication tools and better matching of cases to the right type of lawyer, lawyers should not feel compelled to lock their entire fee in place with a large retainer but feel more empowered to work with a client over time and earn their fee. This type of situation allows high up front legal fees to be lowered and forces lawyers to earn their fees over time in a case. This in turn makes law more accessible to the middle class. It is the goal of providing services like these which continues to attract me to law. If I can help both more people and lawyers to embrace these philosophies, then I believe it will be a positive impact on the practice of law.
I don’t believe any of these solutions are too far out of reach for both lawyers and the general public. If lawyers embraced these strategies, then perhaps this troubling scenario of people representing themselves in court would be reversed.
Tribune Review Features 123 Law Group
The Tribune Review wrote an excellent article about some of the ways technology is benefiting the practice of law. The focus of the article was the T-BOLT Conference (The Best of Legal Technology) which I helped to organize and presented at. The conference was attended by approximately 200 local attorneys at the David L. Lawrence convention center on November 10 -11th. I presented on the topic of Electronic Discovery and offered a primer to benefit small law firms on how to handle cases in this field. Michael Munz, the technologist behind our website MakingLawEasy.com presented on Internet marketing for law firms.
Read here for more information on technology for lawyers as well as a few quotes I gave the Tribune Review on how technology is changing the practice of law. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_597960.html
123 Law Group Attorney Wins National Electronic Discovery Award
Karl Schieneman was awarded the 2008 Most Innovative Use of ESI award at the 2nd Annual Vestige E-Discovery Awards Gala held in Cleveland, Ohio on November 1st, 2008. Two Pittsburgh attorneys were honored with technology awards. The other attorney, David Cohen, Esq. is an electronic discovery attorney at AmLaw 20 law firm K&L Gates.
There were over 80 nominees who were lawyers, judges or consultants. The panel of 5 judges included several lawyers, a forensic expert, and a US District Court Magistrate. The award gala was a black tie event held at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland. The Honorable Thomas J. Moyer, Chief Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, served as the keynote speaker.
The award given to attorney Karl Schieneman was based on his 15 years of experience in electronic discovery, his board game Discovery Land which models electronic discovery projects, Staffrite software for determining ROI calculations and optimal staffing numbers for starting document review projects and his humorous electronic discovery wine, 4th C Cabernet which was autographed by the Honorable Shira A. Scheindlin United States District Judge from the Southern District of N.Y. and plaintiff Laura Zubulake which draws inspiration from the infamous Zubulake electronic discovery opinion.