Yesterday, I had the pleasure of serving as a moderator at a CLE event in Nashville focused on developments in the world of consumer-facing legal services providers. There are a world of companies – predominantly existing only online — that have an increasing presence in the lives of people in need of legal services and answers to their legal questions who, often otherwise, would not reach out directly to a lawyer to try to obtain help for their problems.
The full event was a 3 hour long seminar covering several topics, but the panel I moderated encompassed an hour of conversation with Bob Aicher of ZeekBeek, Matt Horn from Legal Services Link, and Dan Lear from Avvo.
Now, if you are reading this, you’re likely already familiar with the various aspects of Avvo’s footprint in the marketplace. You may not know as much, however, about ZeekBeek or Legal Services Link.
In some ways, they do quite similar things but the approach is different. Both operate as an online platform through which people in need of legal services can connect with lawyers who are willing to provide services. ZeekBeek partners exclusively with state bar associations and, thus, in those states comes across as an entity that has the imprimatur of the state regulatory body and also — for a fee — provides its participating lawyers within a state a different platform for making referrals of work to other lawyers. Legal Services Link monetizes its provision of a market place for consumers to ask questions and obtain legal advice and representation from participating lawyers by allowing lawyers to view questions for free but requiring lawyers who want to interact with the consumer by replying and answering their inquiries to pay an annual membership fee for that privilege.
While each of the three representatives had differing views on the topic of whether they versus those they compete with are able to do what they do in a way that the participating lawyers can be assured of compliance with the ethics rules, it was very interesting (though not surprising) to hear all three of them agree that the ethics rules that relate to their services are desperately in need of change.
It was a very interesting and engaging discussion. The good news for you, if you are interested in checking it out, is that you can view the entire program by registering/purchasing it at this link from the TBA. (As of now there is no way to just pay for the middle hour which was the program I moderated, but should that change I will update this post.)