eLawyering or Bust? - An Interview with Marc Lauritsen
Marc Lauritsen (aka the HotDocs guy) challenges us to assess how technologies can help deliver legal services to low and moderate income clients more effectively. Marc is co-chair of the ABA eLawyering taskforce and conducts outreach presentations four times a year in conjunction with the ABA section meetings. See Marc’s presentation, "Doing Law on the Web: eLawyering and the Future of Legal Work."
NTAP: What’s going on with eLawyering?
Marc: There is a lot going on. There are lawyer sites such as my co-chair Richard Granat’s http://www.directlaw.com/. These kinds of attorneys are using the web environment and software tools to deliver services. Some entrepreneurial folks are seeing real opportunities that will change the profession. And the UK is in the midst of deregulating the profession. They are permitting external capital into law firms. There is a new venture capital fund in the UK to invest in these kinds of initiatives. It will probably take a few years before that kind of change is seen in the US.
NTAP: There seems to be an assessment where people of all income ranges try to figure out what they really need professional advice versus what is more process or routine. It seems like few people can afford the professional services of a lawyer.
Marc: Yes – there is a latent market for service delivery. There are also non-lawyer websites such as Legal Zoom (http://www.legalzoom.com/). They are doing a real publicity pitch in markets such as California and Massachusetts. They say that “this is the way you should get your legal documents done…don’t pay a lawyer.” This will wake up some lawyers!
The technology has been ready for decades. Some of the systems are lawyer driven, some consumer driven. These are systems that make business sense. Offices can do online advice and produce documents. Of course in legal services we’ve been working on the NPADO project and programs have expanded their statewide website delivery systems. Some are doing online intake.
NTAP: Much of the eLawyering concepts dovetail with the work at home phenomenon. Is the legal industry changing to support this?
Marc: Yes I’ve seen new virtual law firms springing up in NY and Boston. Much of this is beneath the radar. Again – Richard Granat is an example of this model. Later this month I’ll be going to a conference at William & Mary about innovators in law schools. For law students the entire legal environment changes during the period that they are attending school! Law schools have paid a lot of attention to the intellectual developments of technology and the law but the actual practice of using technology effectively in your law practice is not discussed much. Chicago Kent is an exception.
For more information about Marc’s interesting career see: http://www.capstonepractice.com/whoisML.pdf. He can be reached at (978) 456-3424 or marc@capstonepractice.com.