The ‘Good Enough’ Revolution
With the Legal Services Act (LSA) coming into force in perhaps as little as 18 months, the discussion and debate over the ‘commodification’ of legal services is beginning to gather pace. The chief objection, at least on consumer grounds, of so-called ‘Tesco law’ (the arrival of large commercial institutions into the marketplace through the Alternate Business Structures that the LSA will soon allow) is as follows: the law is complicated, everybody’s circumstances are different, and what works for one client may not work for another - essentially, refuting the ‘one-size fits all’ approach.
There is certainly some truth in that, but it is a long way from being the whole story. While it is true that most peoples legal circumstances are different, in practise for the majority of cases there is an awful lot of common ground - and by it’s nature, commodification is only concerned with that common ground.
There is an interesting article on this subject - “The Good Enough Revolution” - in this month’s edition of Wired magazine, which discusses the market-changing effects of technology that is tailored precisely to meet the majority of market needs, and no more. And the law is no exception; in the piece, alongside such hi tech examples as Skype and drone planes, our own Richard Granat, CEO of Epoq US, discusses the concept of E-lawyering.
In it, he explains how law firms that embrace this principle, and make it the start point of their legal services (not the ‘be all and end all’, but the baseline from which they engage with customers ) are likely to succeed in the coming years.
The relevant section of the article can be found here, and the whole piece starts here. There is also some further discussion of Richard and his belief in E-lawyering on the Legal rebels site.