A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, May 1999.

Can legal services be packaged and sold ‘off the shelf’ over the internet? Those who think not should open there eyes and look around, for it has been happening for some time.

With the popularisation of computing in the early 80s came the first legal support systems which sought to automate routine procedures and provide the practitioners with aids to boost their productivity. Will drafting, conveyancing and debt collection systems were staple offerings of the new legal systems suppliers. The law publishers meanwhile sought to convert their existing published precedent libraries to electronic format and specialist law forms suppliers came to market with digital versions of prescribed law forms which could be filled in on screen and also integrated with the aforementioned legal support systems.

But these systems were addressed squarely to the legal market. Although they encapsulated a degree of expertise, it was largely the routine aspects of procedure which were automated, leaving the practitioner to decide the appropriate answers to certain questions, adjust any detailed documentation and advise the client on non routine matters outside the scope of the system.

At the same time other publishers sought to tap into the DIY market for legal services with packages for writing straightforward documents like simple wills (predominantly), powers of attorney and the like. This activity is not confined to ‘private client’ matters, for there are a number of collections of agreements addressed to the business market. These services are now also generally available on the internet.

Thus even before the widespread adoption of the internet as a publishing medium there was already a large body of services packaged and made available direct to the client which hitherto would have been provided by lawyers.

Lawyers, sceptical at first that their services could be commoditised in this way, have responded. Now there are a number of law firms offering services over the internet. Typically instructions are taken via a web form, these details are fed into the firm’s case management system and the matter is progressed from there. An oft-quoted example of such services are those offered by Kaye Tesler & Co. Other services such as the Desktop Lawyer service from Epoch Software and Freeserve offer intelligent production of commercial agreements and high value legal advice on regulatory matters is delivered by Linklaters’ Blue Flag and Clifford Chance’s NextLaw services. As you might expect these services are backed up by chargeable legal advice and qualified with appropriate disclaimers.

The question is not, then, whether legal services can be commoditised, but the extent to which it is sensible to seek so to do. Developing a system that can be used and relied on by a client requires considerable effort. Not only should the system produce the right result for a given set of circumstances, it must also provide sufficient help and guidance to ensure that the intended client can accurately express those circumstances in the first place. This is far more demanding than a system designed for lawyers to use which can make certain assumptions about the expertise of the operator.

For further comment and analysis on this topic, see the recent article on Neil Cameron’s website.

Hits and myths

Many who should know better continue to refer, without qualification, to the number of ‘hits’ such and such a site has received. Such statistics are meaningless. A hit is a request to an internet server to serve up a file. Since most pages reference a number of graphics (often far too many), a request for a page will generate multiple hits. A visitor will usually access several pages, some containing several frames (each of which is of course a separate hit) maybe several times – either out of genuine interest or simply because they are lost! It does not take an Einstein to figure out therefore that a visitor can easily clock up of the order of 100 hits in a visit. To make sense of these statistics reporting software can be employed which will amongst other things calculate the number of visits and unique visitors in a given period based on certain assumptions. One such utility, employed on my site, is Marketwave’s HitList Professional. After the initial disappointment that, no, your site has not been visited by 100,000 people this month, the value of these visit-based statistics will be quickly appreciated. So if a third party hosts your website, ask them to provide them.

Best legal website

I have a soft spot for the LOTIES – the Law Office Technology Innovation Awards – run by In Brief Magazine: my infolaw site won the first award for Best Legal Website in 1996 and was runner up the following year. Nominations for this category this year have determined the following finalists: 1 Crown Office Row, Lovell White Durrant, Butterworths and Lawyers Online. While all have their good points, these sites are so different in purpose you have to wonder who is voting for them and why.

Featured links

Kaye Tessler & Co is at www.kt.uklaw.net
The Desktop Lawyer is at www.desktoplawyer.freeserve.net/law/
Blue Flag is at www.blueflag.com
NextLaw is at www.nextlaw.com
Neil Cameron is at www.lawtech.demon.co.uk
Marketwave is at www.marketwave.com
In Brief Magazine is at www.inbrief.co.uk