Commoditizing Legal Services, Disruptive or Dangerous?
(Originally published on December 9, 2016 on LinkedIn)
In last few months I have come across at least 4 – 5 ‘legal-tech’ / ‘tech-legal’ start-ups which are attempting to imbibe technology in legal services. While some of them are focussing on the discovery and market-making side of the spectrum, the others seem to be focussing on the delivery aspect of the legal services. This is certainly disruptive and I feel very positive about the fact that legal services are being seen as viable enough to create business models around it. The fact that I am a little concerned about is the way this is being perceived and being done.
Technology is certainly welcome, and I say this as a lawyer myself. For lawyers, technology has helped a great deal. Be it research, client management, document management, record keeping, billing or even client communication, technology has mostly been an advantage and therefore there is merit in adopting technology best suited to one’s requirements. However, use of technology, artificial intelligence and algorithms etc., for commoditizing legal services may be a little, if not significantly, dangerous and may have unwanted implications.
Two aspects need to be understood with regard to and in the context of legal services. Firstly, a lawyer’s is a ‘profession’ and not a ‘business’ and accordingly there are statutory regulations and restrictions in place regarding the same. Secondly, performance and delivery of legal services is mostly personalized, sensitive and confidential. The nature of legal service is such that a human mind and brain cannot (and should not) be substituted by a robot or an algorithm or any computer program. Every legal issue may have a different solution, and different approaches may be required to address different situations. The multiplicity of laws, multiplicity of interpretations and their application to different issues in different situations add to the complexities involved. In this background, if we talk about a situation where a response to a legal query is autogenerated based upon the inputs provided by the querist or a legal document / agreement is created out of a standard template based upon certain inputs provided by a seeker, the results could be significantly incorrect / inappropriate.
One to one and personalized human interaction is imperative for initiation of a client-attorney relationship and performance and delivery of legal services. A lawyer with required expertise and experience would be able to extract all information from the client which is necessary for him to understand the issue and offer a solution. Anything which hinders this process may affect the quality of legal services and may require regulation.
The ‘profession’ and ‘business’ aspect of legal services also need to be kept in mind while creating ‘legal-tech’ business models. While regulatory concerns regarding marketing and soliciting are a concern from one angle, the aspect of asymmetry of information at the level of aggregator, the manner of allocation of the work among the lawyers at the backend and lead and business generation guided by revenues and commissions may lead to deterioration of quality and professional standards.
One hopes that these concerns would have already been addressed by the market players and the seekers of legal services do not bear the brunt of commoditization of legal services.
