All that the ABS proposals will give them is the automation
of routine legal services, but not any improvement in the affordability of legal advice services.
This could be fixed fees: automation of
many routine legal services may finally achieve the long - predicted demise of time - based billing.
But the problem of unaffordable legal services is caused by the high cost of legal advice services, not
by routine legal services such as simple real estate deals, divorces, and incorporations.
For simple and
routine legal services such as an employment contract or a set of terms and conditions you can choose from one of our Packaged Service Templates.
With her usual adroitness, Monica offered passionate insights about our new pilot project with the American Bar Association that hopes to address the long - standing problem that 80 percent of Americans can not find or
afford routine legal services, while small firm lawyers struggle to be profitable.
In addition to legal research, there are many other specialized support services that can be provided with such expert advice, including the automation of
routine legal services at a lower cost than can the investor - owners of law firms (the ABS alternative), and advising on marketing strategies and methods of maximizing income and client services and satisfaction.
Technological innovations and the lessons of the 2008 Financial Crisis are challenging the hegemony of the billable hour and are driving clients to
demand routine legal services for a fraction of the cost.
Technology will transform multiple aspects of legal work, but legal experts predict highly paid lawyers will spend their time on the top rungs of the «legal ladder,» working on tasks with higher - level cognitive demands; non-lawyers or technology will perform the
more routine legal services.
With good law society leadership, the automating of
routine legal services with software «apps» can be done by Canada's legal profession itself.
Note however, that the problem is caused by legal advice services, and not
by routine legal services that are mostly routine paper - work, such as simple house sales, wills, incorporating small companies, and such.
Over 150 paralegals and managers provide a comprehensive range of
routine legal services in either a standalone capacity or integrated alongside AG's lawyers and, increasingly, as part of clients own internal teams.
Progress is being made in delivering better value to clients, in
automating routine legal services, in project managing work and in using technology - led solutions such as document review tools used to create client efficiencies.
Their other two major features are to automate
routine legal services, and to enable related non-legal services to be provided with legal services.
[i] The «unaffordable legal services problem» afflicts both kinds of legal services: (1) legal advice services; and, (2)
routine legal services that don't require legal advice.
As to financing such development by Canada's lawyers (instead of by commercial investors) of software for automating the delivery of
routine legal services: more than $ 11 million could be raised if every lawyer in Canada paid an addition one - time $ 100 increase in annual law society fees.