Tell the Lawyers You are Mad as Hell and You’re Not Going to Take it Anymore!

By: Rick D. Massey, J.D.
Copyright © 2009

Law firms large and small are beginning to recognize something their clients have been trying to tell them for years. People and businesses can no longer afford to sign up for legal services at an outlandish hourly rate with no promise of any specific outcome and no limits on the amount of legal fees they will ultimately be billed. Don’t get me wrong. There are some legal services (such as litigation) in which no competent attorney will promise a specific outcome. But the combination of the unknown outcome with the unlimited potential cost is pretty hard for a rational person to accept. There are more client-friendly ways to offer legal services. And the time has come for this to be the rule rather than the exception.

A Bad Economy Has Just Accelerated the Inevitable

With the economy down the drain, the pressure on people and on entire families increases. Even before we began to realize how bad things were in the overall economy, the State of Missouri was experiencing its own crises in the public defender system. People have a constitutional right to a speedy trial and to an attorney even if they cannot afford one. But the public defenders and other attorneys willing to donate their time to represent indigent defendants were already failing to keep up with the demand.

Meanwhile, the Missouri Supreme Court has made it easier for pro se litigants (people not represented by attorneys) to file for a divorce and petition the Court for child support. This decision was and still is highly controversial among family law practitioners. The judges and family law practitioners who sponsored these changes believe this will help people who cannot afford legal representation and would otherwise have no realistic means of accessing the Courts. On the other hand, many lawyers that practice in this area fear that some who could not afford professional legal assistance before will find themselves in the position of needing an experienced attorney more than ever as the result of trying to do something they really don’t know how to do effectively.

There are good arguments on both sides. In some cases, it really is a “simple divorce” in which there are no children, the marriage was for a short duration of time, neither party brought much into the marriage, both are broke now, and there isn’t much in the way of property or finances to take out. But without an attorney, it is less likely that either litigant will recognize, let alone understand the impact of issues that make it something other than a simple divorce. My associates who concentrate their practice on family law are already seeing people who have irreparably hurt themselves by making simple and avoidable mistakes by things as basic as filling in standard forms incorrectly. These simple mistakes will ultimately cost them more than they saved by not retaining an attorney.

So How Should Legal Services be Delivered?

Lawyers will always provide a necessary and important service. But the world continues to evolve and change. The legal profession will have to evolve as well. The education of the average person and her access to technology is greater than ever in history. Whether professionals who have traditionally held a monopoly like it or not: people don’t need them for the same things today that they needed them for in 1909. Many of the medications that once required a prescription are now available over the counter. People are doing their own pregnancy – even their own paternity tests at home with no doctor involved. This doesn’t mean they no longer need doctors. If the home pregnancy test produces a positive result, the importance of prenatal care is just as real as it was before.

Likewise, attorneys will have to face the fact that legal services cannot be offered or priced the same in today’s world as they were when the average remodeling contractor could not download a form for his own collections demand letter over the internet.

Some in the legal community are beginning to recognize this trend. One of the leading voices sounding a wake-up call to law firms, Richard Susskind has published a new book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services that discusses the magnitude of these changes.

Individuals realize that the information age allows them to do more for themselves. Business people, regardless of the services or products they offer are finding that their customers want more for less. And they are lying awake at night finding ways to deliver on that expectation. When they need legal services, they will settle for no less.

Lawyers will have to move away from the old full service billable hour model. They will have to do a better job of telling their clients what to expect up front and delivering on that promise. They will have to offer real choices to those clients who are sophisticated enough to do some of the work themselves. The legal process can and should be open, efficient and competitive. There will be those who will hold out to the bitter end in their resistance to changes such as the availability of unbundled legal services and some lawyers’ willingness to review the client’s legal documents instead of drafting everything from scratch. But the world is moving in that direction. There is no turning back.