More Commoditization -- Putting A Price On Experience

Still ruminating on our recent post regarding the commoditization of some legal services.

The commoditization is coming hand in hand with the unbundling of legal services. Some legal tasks, which historically have been conducted en masse in one office, are being fragmented and driven down the workflow pyramid to their most cost efficient layer -- even if that layer is in another zip code.

This natural process (aligning the work with the most cost-efficient execution of the work), which has always occurred within the confines of a single firm, is slowly taking place across the country and the planet. Essentially, the walls of the single firm are coming down. And, with the removal of some office walls, the consumer, end-user, and attorneys themselves have increased access to legal process efficiencies.

To put it another way, the unbundling of legal work is a natural byproduct of increased access.

As for the increased access, well, there's that darned internet again. Okay, it is both obvious and a monumental understatement to say that the internet has and is changing the landscape of many professions (ask any travel agent if his/her job evovled in the mid 1990's). But there is no denying that, in terms of evolution, we are knee deep in primordial soup watching a surge of business models bubble to the top, each with the goal of leveraging the end-user's increased access to legal efficiencies.

One of these new strands of business models that is especially noteworthy is unbundling and commoditizing not just legal tasks, but another entity entirely -- legal experience.

Tologix offers software to attorney's who conduct research in specialty areas of law. A firm's (or even a single attorney's) years of work can be collected, captured, and organized so that the aggregate can be searched and monetized on a subscription basis to end-users.

Websites like justanswer.com allow consumers to name their price and receive one-off legal information directly from a network of experienced attorneys online.

Both are prime examples of the wave of creative business models surging right now to leverage the unbundling of legal offerings resulting from increased accessibility via the internet.

Again, it's way too early to say which models will thrive and which will flame out in short order. But it sure is fascinating to watch.