The guidelines can be found here and also on the MyLawyer.com web site Many legal information information providers embrace and support the guidelines either explicitly or in principle. Even though the guidelines were published 9 years ago, they have stood the test of time and are common sense rules to guide non-lawyer users on how to evaluate the quality of a legal information web site.

Here is a quick summary of the best practice guidelines:

1. Full and accurate contact information should be available on the site.
2. The date that substantive legal content material was prepared or last review should be available.
3. The jurisdiction to which the site’s content relates should be clear.
4. There should be a disclaimer that legal information is not the same as legal advice.
5. There should be links to other resources that will help a user solve their legal problems, and where appropriate citations to relevant case law and legislation should be available.
6. Where appropriate, site should provide users with information on how and where to obtain legal advice and further information.
7. Providers should obtain permission to use content from other providers.
8. There should be a clear terms and conditions of use available on the site.
9. Sites should clearly and conspicuously provide users with their privacy policies and policies on security of communications.

These best practice are really minimum standards. Credible legal information web site providers will satisfy these standards whether they explicitly state their support for the ABA Guidelines or simply incorporate these principles into their Web site design and publication process.

We would be wary of legal information web sites that don’t at least try to comply or support these these best practices.

To these best practices, we would add the following:

• Look for a BBB – Better Business Bureau Seal which will act as a verification of the business practices of the vendor and an avenue for registering complaints.
• If services or information is sold from the site, in must be from a secure web space. Look for https:// in your web browser to make sure that you are in a secure web space that requires a user name and password for log-in. Look for the display of an SSL Certificate which means that all communications between the web site and the server are encrypted and secure.

This is another post, in a series of blog posts, that are designed to help consumers understand how Web sites in the legal industry work and the value they offer.

BeiBei Que, the co-founder of AttorneyFee.com,  calls the site a Kayak for Legal Fees. Like Kayak, which is a price comparison engine for air plane fares, AttorneyFee.com’s web crawlers search the web for law firms that advertise their legal fees, and then display these these law firms by type of subject matter and location.

Legal Fee Transparency
This is an interesting concept because it enables a consumer or small business searching for a lawyer to more easily compare legal fees for typical transactions, or to compare hourly rates, between lawyers for similar types of work. The site is going to be more useful for consumers and small business than it will be for major corporations purchasing legal services from very large law firms.

On the other hand, I can see  law firms creating feature rich service packages for the legal work involved in a hi-tech start-up, or a Series A financing.  This is reasonably complex work that still lends itself to a fixed price. Taking the mystery out of the pricing for this kind of work would reduce the friction that it takes to do an initial financing, probably expanding the market for this kind of legal work.

Many lawyers think that advertising their legal fees is unprofessional, but the reality is that consumer behavior has changed dramatically because of the Web. Consumers are now accustomed to doing price comparisons over the Web, and for certain kinds of transactions, particular more routine transactions that are very similar in nature, price is a factor because the skills to generate certain kinds of work are comparable from lawyer to lawyer.

For example,  you don’t have to be a “rocket scientist,” or be a “bet your company lawyer” to represent a client in an uncontested divorce, so why should one lawyer charge $2,000.00 and another $350.00. Consumer’s generally don’t know any better, so they choose the first lawyer they come upon and have no basis for comparing the work of one lawyer with another. Lawyers are notoriously reluctant to quote fees. Often you have to come in for a”Consultation” and then the lawyer drops a fee on you. This will change as more lawyers set-up shop on the Web as virtual law firm and charge fixed fees for limited legal services, (See a listing of fixed fee, online law firms at the  MyLawyer.com Law Firm Directory.)

The impact of this kind of a web site will be to flatten or compress legal fees for similar transactions. But in my view this is a good thing as transparency in any business, in my opinion is a good thing, and the pricing for certain kinds of transactions is much too high for what you get.

Consumer’s are aware of pricing from non-lawyer document preparation sites, where for example the going rate seems to be around $250.00-$299.00 for an uncontested divorce, but  no legal advice is included. The same price clarity has not been true of law firms. (Why anyone would pay $299.00 for a set of uncontested divorce forms without any legal advice, with you can purchase the same forms for $59.00 is beyond me, but that’s the subject of another blog post.).

The AttorneyFee.com Web site is simple to navigate. Register, search by matter and  location and  a list of lawyers is generated in your state displaying the prices for certain types of work.

The site is evolving and adding new features monthly. At my last look, the site had integrated reviews and profiles from AVVO – the sometimes controversial lawyer rating site. This makes a lot of sense as the Web site have the same goal – helping consumers make more informed choices about selecting a lawyer.

Limitations

There are some areas of the site that need improvement.

First, the site could have more detailed information about the services that a law firm offers in relationship to a price. For example, displaying the fact that one law firm charges $299.00 for an uncontested divorce, and another charges $1,500.00 would be more helpful if the information were also available that in the lower priced situation the party represents them selves at the divorce hearing, and in the higher priced situation, the attorney represent that represented party at the hearing. The additional information would  enable a more accurate comparison  –  comparing apples to apples, rather than apples to oranges.

A second issue, related to the first, is that the site lumps all legal services into a single category and doesn’t give due recognition to the new concept of “unbundled” or limited legal services – a fast emerging approach to pricing legal services for a fixed fee.

Third, the site could have links directly to the law firm’s web site. The only way you can easily get to the law firm’s Web site is to click on the AVVO link and go through the AVVO profile.

Summary

Despite these limitations, AttorneyFee.com is making a major contribution towards providing a visible data base about how much it costs to solve legal problems. Data by itself can be a powerful incentive to rationalizing the pricing of legal services for consumers and small business. No legal Web site has attempted to offer comprehensive pricing information over a range of legal matters. So this is a first and a major advancement towards peeling back the Wizard’s black curtain.

I hope AttorneyFee.com find’s a firm footing as it explores a way to make money from the site.  The work they are doing has value but it comes at a cost that must be covered.

Of that, $322.4 million would fund basic field grants for the delivery of civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. The impact of this agreement would reduce LSC’s funding by 13.9 percent, basically reducing LSC’s funding to 2007 levels. The House is scheduled to take up the Agreement on the Floor next week.  The impact of this cut in the funding is to reduce access to the legal system for low income individuals and families severely.  At a time of economic distress, legal needs are increasing, not contracting. Can we have a just society, when so many individuals are excluded from access to the legal system? Can we be a democratic society with so many individuals excluded from our court system?
Write to your Congressman today and support LSC funding.

Let's Make A Deal

Recently several Web sites have emerged that enable consumers to bid for legal services. Examples include: ExpertBids and  Shpoonkle. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce  it). They all work pretty much the same way.

You submit a description of your project or the service you want, your location and your estimated budget. You create a secure account with a user name and password. Your service request is then posted or published to a lawyers who have registered for the service so they can bid on your work. When a lawyer bids for your work, you receive an email (each bid includes a rate, a description, and the lawyer’s profile, rating and client reviews). When the lawyer bids, whether bid by the hour or fixed price, you receive an email which includes a rate, a description, and the lawyer’s profile, rating and client reviews. The process gives you options and a basis for comparing how different lawyer;s will submit bids and pricing for similar work. The process is always free to the potential client. Once you are connected to a lawyer you can continue your conversation either online or off-line. The sites enable you to communicate with the lawyer online directly, but often you don’t get any free legal advice or any legal service until you accept a retainer agreement and the lawyer/client relationship is established. This is a requirement of the Rules of Professional Responsibility in every state that regulate lawyers and the legal profession.

For law firms that have learned how to offer legal services for common legal matters for a fixed fee, these bidding sites could be another channel to the consumer and potential clients. These law firms, often virtual law firms, are low-cost producers of legal services, and can out bid more traditional legal firms without sacrificing quality or their profit margins.

Some of these law firms offer what is called, “limited legal services”, which enable these law firms to offer a low cost solution to consumers, but often consumers have no understanding of this concept. See for example the law firms listed in the MyLawyer.com Directory of  Virtual Law Firms. We think that the bidding sites should have articles and information on their web sites describing the “limited legal service” concept as this would be way to educate consumers about another way to cost effectively buy legal services.

A problem that we see with the bidding sites that we reviewed is that there is no easy for the consumer to describe that they want “limited legal services“, as distinguished from traditional legal services. There are options for bidding by the hour, or by the project, but no option for limiting the scope of representation. “Unbundling legal services“, is a relatively new idea, but many states (more than 35) have already passed amendments to their Professional Rules of Responsibility that enable law firms to offer “limited legal services” as long as the retainer clearly defines the scope of representation.

It is too early to predict whether these “bidding sites” will survive. In the “dot-com boom and bust” era, there were several experiments with lawyer bidding, but all the sites failed because they could generate enough revenue.

Susan Cartier Liebel, the President of Solo Practice University has written a good blog post analyzing these sites,  that is worth reviewing by consumers who are interested in this approach to securing a lawyer.

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When would you want to consider a life estate arrangement? The estate planning tool usually comes into play when there is a desire to pass down real property–like a family home–to specific heirs without excessive probate and other legal complications.

Here’s a common scenario:

Pam is now widowed and has lived in her home for 40 years. She wants to pass the home down to her son Joe when she passes away. Pam could consider transferring the home’s title to Joe now, while retaining a life estate in the home. This way, Pam can continue living in the home and carrying out all the home-owner duties she always did (such as collecting rent and paying all taxes and expenses). This makes Pam the ‘life tenant’ of the home. When Pam passes away, the life estate agreement expires and home ownership transfers to Joe.

Second marriages are a common reason families turn to life estate agreements as well. If Pam had gotten remarried, she may prefer to allow her new spouse to live in her home for the rest of his life even if she passes away first. She can give her spouse a life estate that will allow him to continue to live in the home until he passes away or chooses to move. At that point, the home can pass on to Joe as it would have before.

There are certain limitations that must be considered when weighing the life estate option. Life tenants are prohibited from damaging or devaluing the land, a limitation which can cause tension among family members in such an arrangement (with the owner often accusing the life tenant of “letting the place go”). But it’s a worthy consideration for many families–one that should certainly be investigated with the assistance of an estate planning attorney. This is an example of a situation where you might want to consult an estate planning attorney rather than do it yourself.

A good resource for finding affordable attorneys is the Directory of Online  Law Firms that appears on this Web site. These attorneys  offer fixed fee legal services online for an affordable and fixed fee. You can purchase legal advice online by  the questions or issue and avoid spending hundreds of dollars for a consultation or making a commitment to a long term pre-paid legal plan where you are required to make a monthly payment whether or not you use the plan’s services.

This blog is authored by members of the MyLawyer team, and edited by Richard S. Granat, CEO/MyLawyer.

This blog is consumer-focused. It will cover new developments in the delivery of legal services to individuals of moderate means and the broad middle class in the United States.  Both sectors of the population have been priced out of the market for legal services and therefore access to the legal system.

However, at the intersection of Internet technology and the legal industry there are innovations that are resulting in broadening access to justice. State Courts, the National Legal Services Program through its TIG Program, lawyers delivering unbundled legal services online, alternative providers of legal solutions such as LegalZoom, are all exploring ways to broaden the market for legal services by finding effective solutions for what has been called, “the latent market for legal services.”  New Web sites such as ExpertBids, LawPivot, and AttorneyFee.com are offering consumers new tools and approaches for getting the information they need to become effective purchasers of legal services. This blog will also cover innovative developments in other countries that are enabling access to the legal system for all, and ask the question: Why not here?

This blog is focused on helping consumers and small business find and use new tools for accessing the legal system at a price they can afford. We will profile new online law firms that are disruptive of the old order, identify useful tools that help consumers pay fair and reasonable prices for legal services, and test out new online services that can deliver a legal solution at prices that people can afford. Legal service affordability is the theme of this blog.