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Disrupted how in this case? Lawyers usually use forms / boilerplate because they have worked in the past. Many of these forms are the sum total of thousands of

Disrupted how in this case? Lawyers usually use forms / boilerplate because they have worked in the past. Many of these forms are the sum total of thousands of hours of time and refinement over tens of years. Nobody wants to pay a lawyer to reproduce that -- at least, nobody in retail law (big corporate settlement contracts? Those see many many hours of revision and negotion, but ultimately are still based on a core form that rarely changes). I agree that a copy+paste job seems like you are getting cheated. But like an engineer, a lawyer isn't charging you for typing, or turning a screwdriver. They are charging for knowing what contract you need, etc. What's honestly shocking right now are the alternatives. What LegalZoom gave my friend to start an LLC would have been malpractice had it come from an actual lawyer. (But surprise! You can't sue legal zoom as easily for that thing as you can a lawyer). Imo what really needs to go is hourly billing. But that's another conversation, and a really hard problem.

osrec 8y ago
I don't know how exactly, but perhaps we could have an open git repository-esque method for refining contracts. Right now, one law firm refines its own contracts over the lifetime of the firm. Why not democratise the entire process and make it open? Then lawyers can stop ripping people off for this sort of non-work and instead focus on actually providing legal counsel (which is what you truly should be paying a lawyer for).
- pkilgore 8y ago
  > Invoice > Task. By. Rate. > -------------- > Fix form. Paralegal $ 100 > Knowing what Lawyer. $ 4,900 > form to fix.
- pkilgore 8y ago
  Honest legal Invoice Task. By. Rate. ------------------------------------ Fix form. Paralegal $ 100 Knowing what Lawyer $ 3,900 form to fix. Accepting. Firm $ 1000 liability ------------------------------------ We already live in a world where reuse of forms save clients money. True disruption changes the obvious problem above: how do you replace the cost of professional judgement and trust? If you're an engineer today, you don't get paid poorly because Mongo and Postgres already exist. You get paid well if you know whether a document store or a RDS is the best fit for the systems problem at hand based on a careers worth of experience. As someone who has done both for a living, it's shocking how much overlap there is (overlap that I assume exists in among doctors, accountants, consultants).
SamBam 8y ago
Surely it is being disrupted by all the make-a-will websites and stuff -- LegalZoom as you say. If a standard, simple will is entirely boilerplate with some search-and-replace, then it can be replaced with an app. You decide whether to pay the lawyer based on your confidence that the boilerplate stuff is right for your case, and will hold up in court. Individuals are likely to take this risk, large companies are not. So the large companies will still get boilerplate search-and-replace, but with the added confidence that they have lowered their risk.

osrec 8y ago

I don't know how exactly, but perhaps we could have an open git repository-esque method for refining contracts. Right now, one law firm refines its own contracts over the lifetime of the firm. Why not democratise the entire process and make it open? Then lawyers can stop ripping people off for this sort of non-work and instead focus on actually providing legal counsel (which is what you truly should be paying a lawyer for).

pkilgore 8y ago
> Invoice > Task. By. Rate. > -------------- > Fix form. Paralegal $ 100 > Knowing what Lawyer. $ 4,900 > form to fix.
pkilgore 8y ago
Honest legal Invoice Task. By. Rate. ------------------------------------ Fix form. Paralegal $ 100 Knowing what Lawyer $ 3,900 form to fix. Accepting. Firm $ 1000 liability ------------------------------------ We already live in a world where reuse of forms save clients money. True disruption changes the obvious problem above: how do you replace the cost of professional judgement and trust? If you're an engineer today, you don't get paid poorly because Mongo and Postgres already exist. You get paid well if you know whether a document store or a RDS is the best fit for the systems problem at hand based on a careers worth of experience. As someone who has done both for a living, it's shocking how much overlap there is (overlap that I assume exists in among doctors, accountants, consultants).

SamBam 8y ago

Surely it is being disrupted by all the make-a-will websites and stuff -- LegalZoom as you say. If a standard, simple will is entirely boilerplate with some search-and-replace, then it can be replaced with an app. You decide whether to pay the lawyer based on your confidence that the boilerplate stuff is right for your case, and will hold up in court. Individuals are likely to take this risk, large companies are not. So the large companies will still get boilerplate search-and-replace, but with the added confidence that they have lowered their risk.