The Problem:
Lawyers are busy people. This is especially true for injury lawyers or workers’ compensation lawyers. Any part of their job that can be outsourced helps.
The Business
Outsourced initial consultations.
A lawyer will tell you I’m crazy. The initial consultation is the most important part of the representation. The attorney determines whether she wants to take the case at the initial consultation. You are screening the client as much as the client is screening you. In fact, you are likely screening far more than the client.
The service needs to know the attorney better than she knows herself. The service needs to know her criteria and preferences. The service needs to be staffed by lawyers. Finally, the state’s bar counsel office needs to be comfortable
Doableness
This would never work for many kinds of lawyers. It wouldn’t work for lawyers who serve businesses. It wouldn’t even work for many lawyers who serve consumers. For example, a birth injury lawyer succeeds or fails based on the cases she takes. Take right cases and you make a fortune. Take the wrong cases and ou work for free for years. This idea works for law firms doing some level of a volume business. Prime examples are car accident lawyers or comp lawyers. In fact, I got this idea while doing some consulting for my father’s workers’ compensation lawyer. Their site is here.
The problem isn’t with execution. The problem is getting customer (the attorney) buy-in.
My Thoughts
I’m examining the attorney-client relationship from the inside out. I’m not sure if this idea is feasible. I know it can be done, and isn’t that difficult to do. I know it would help attorneys lighten their workload. If they didn’t suffer in any way from using a service such as this, that’s worth money to them. I’m just not sure lawyers could ever be convinced of this fact.
Ultimately, I think it’s important to examine everything from the inside out. Don’t take for granted that anything is certain or optimized or intended. Look at why things became the way they became in order to determine if you can make them better. In doing that, you often find businesses. I have this blog because I need to write what I find and what I think about.