Competition isn't a magic wand. Lawyers fees are a market structure problem. A market can work in an efficient competitive way but requires many factors to oper

Competition isn't a magic wand. Lawyers fees are a market structure problem. A market can work in an efficient competitive way but requires many factors to operate that way. Customers need information, and a market where individual customers only make infrequent, non-standardized, often non-public transactions is pretty terrible for creating information customers can find and act upon. That the transactions are also non-reversible and "sticky", or difficult to change midway trough a case is also not great for a competitive market.