Bridging the Affordability Gap in the Legal Industry
Recently I had the crazy notion of trying to reduce the number of remotes that I needed to control the various boxes in my living room, so I went out and bought a universal remote from a pretty well-known brand (it was on sale, like pretty much everything I buy). I read the manual, input the codes, input more codes, searched on the internet for yet more codes, and finally gave up, defeated by technology. I know I could probably pay a small fortune to pay a techie to come show me how to use my $100 remote (that I bought for $30). But I’m frustrated that something so simple should have ever become so expensive and complex.
Just like our legal system
At the heart of our civil legal system is the concept of resolving disagreements between people. Now, if everyone would just always do the right thing, we wouldn’t need a legal system, but the legal system exists because some people will try to take advantage of other people, so some impartial arbiter needs to help resolve these disputes.
Our legal system has followed the path of everything else in this world- things are no longer as simple as they used to be. It is complicated, and it is also expensive, because doing complicated tasks takes a fair amount of education, experience, and elbow grease. So as the cost of legal services has risen sharply (although not as sharply as the cost of legal education, which is another topic entirely!), more and more people have been forced to turn to representing themselves in court.
There is an old saying about such people- “Every man who represents himself has a fool for a client.” I bet it was coined by a lawyer. There is an element of truth in it- but when it costs thousands of dollars to accomplish a seemingly simple task, who can blame anyone for trying? Now, with the wealth of information on the internet, legal answers (and even documents) are readily available, often for free but sometimes for a minimal cost. Which reminds me of another saying- “You get what you pay for.”
One of our goals as a law firm is to bridge this gap between expensive legal services and the need for affordable legal work. That goal is built on a simple proposition: the charge for a service needs to have a rational relationship to the amount of work it requires, along with the expertise it takes to provide it. A simple task should not require an outlandish fee. I think within the legal community, this is a novel idea: The cost of your legal services should not have a direct correlation to the price of the shoes your lawyer is wearing or the car he or she drives.
My proposal to you is simple: I want to you come talk to us about putting together an estate plan, I want to do it at a better price than you will find anywhere else, and I want to you leave wondering why you didn’t do it years ago, considering how easy and inexpensive it was. I’ll have an answer for that one, too- because you haven’t met us yet.