Early in the decade, Mark Hicken found a way to get clients to do the bulk of their own wills online. Using a web-based questionnaire, clients would submit information about their assets and beneficiaries, all of which would feed into software that would create the first draft of a will.
Hicken, a Vancouver lawyer, would then receive the document and, after what were often fairly brief consultations with the clients, could create a finished product. “It really did work very well, and the clients really liked it,” says Hicken of the system he helped develop.
The goal at the time was to market the product to other law firms through a B.C.-focused web portal. But facing a reluctant audience and following the withdrawal of sponsor Telus Corp., Hicken let it die. The problem, he argues, was largely one of timing. “It was probably too early.”
Hicken is now focused on practising wine law but says few of his colleagues have jumped on the innovation bandwagon. “I am surprised that more law firms aren’t doing it for that sort of simple transactional work,” he says.
Essentially, Hicken was practising a rudimentary form of e-lawyering. While commonly defined as offering services over the Internet, a key component is usually “online document assembly.”
Through the Internet, clients could do most of the work — Hicken estimates an online system would do up to 95 per cent of it — themselves. Then, a lawyer could offer legal advice, either by phone, in person, or on the web, to complete it. In return, clients would pay a lower fee, while Hicken would benefit by being able to serve more people.
Another Vancouver lawyer, Nicole Garton-Jones, runs what is essentially a virtual estates and family law firm, Heritage Law, from home. Her staff and fellow lawyers also operate remotely, sending documents to each other over the Internet and largely communicating with clients by phone and e-mail. She can meet with them in person through a deal she has with the lawyer who bought her real estate practice in exchange for use of his office space.
Garton-Jones has implemented the beginnings of an e-lawyering practice by having people fill out a basic questionnaire before taking them on as clients. That way, she gets much of the information she needs to create a will before interviewing them. “When they come in, the first half hour to 45 minutes of the meeting is already done,” she says. “Because we’re paperless, I can just save that right into their file. What would be better is if that form fed directly into a . . . HotDocs automated assembly. I haven’t put that piece together yet, but that would be great.”
Elsewhere, however, the e-lawyering phenomenon has caught on more quickly. From his office in Florida, Richard Granat runs a busy family law practice for clients in Maryland. By having clients fill out an online questionnaire and with the help of a paralegal, he can finish an uncontested divorce file in 15 minutes to half an hour. On average, he handles three files a day — at $300 per case, he’s earning decent money. Granat offers other legal services outside of regular business hours. Using chat and e-mail to provide legal advice, for example, he gets $35 per question. “It’s really on the lawyer’s marginal time, when he’s not working in prime time, so it pays for them to do it as well,” he says.
The whole concept of e-lawyering revolves around what Vancouver lawyer and document-assembly consultant Darryl Mountain calls “disruptive innovations” that gradually take over functions traditionally performed by law firms. “Within the legal industry context, a disruptive innovation is a low-end commoditization that marginalizes the conventional law firm business model,” he wrote in an article for the International Journal of Law and Information Technology. But, he notes, disruption isn’t necessarily bad news for lawyers since they tap into what author Richard Susskind has termed “a latent legal market.” “The way disruption normally works is it changes non-consumers into consumers,” says Mountain, who points out that younger people who otherwise forego getting a will might choose to do so through a cheaper, flat-fee online service.
In Britain, companies have already taken the e-lawyering concept to a higher level as law firms begin to offer increasingly complex legal services online. Richard Cohen, a lawyer who has pioneered the concept there, says his web-based firm can now handle “contentious areas of law” involving multiple documents. With landlord and tenant matters, for example, the eviction process is such that it no longer requires a hearing before a judge. The proceedings now happen through paperwork, meaning law firms can process the matters online.
E-lawyers can also help guide unrepresented litigants. A lawyer offering service online will help clients prepare documents and guide them through the process for a fixed fee without going on the record, says Cohen.
