The greater the choice, the cheaper the price?

 One might think so, but is this also true for legal services? A recent ArtificialLawyer article looked at this issue using the platform www.contractcounsel.com and came to some interesting conclusions:

Contractcounsel is an intermediary platform where legal seekers can request legal services. Approved lawyers then submit offers, with the parameters of duration for the provision of the service and flat-rate price presented in tabular form. Full transparency!

The result to the initial question: The more offers there are, the greater the probability that neither the cheapest nor the most expensive offer will be chosen.

But what makes the platform successful? First, the transparency. Secondly, the fact that only fixed prices are permitted, and thirdly, the advertising promise that only "vetted" lawyers can participate in the program. 

As an aside, the platform naturally collects data, so that in the further future it could also determine the "fair price" for a legal service. Some lawyers see this as a danger, but others see it as an opportunity: they register on the marketplace to get a feel for market prices in the first place. As the founder, Ray Allen, points out in ArtificialLawyer. Nobody can be interested in offers that vary by a factor of 10.

And in German-speaking Europe? There are several lawyer marketplaces with fixed prices in Germany. An interesting approach is taken by frag-einen-Anwalt.de: here, it is not lawyers who submit bids, but the law seeker who offers a price. Of course, this platform also collects data and uses it to suggest a minimum price to the right seeker based on his inquiry and other parameters. This is also a remarkable business idea, which admittedly remains non-transparent to the outside world. Does that bother anyone here?

Clause libraries instead of doc automation?

As Chief Product Officer of LexisNexis GB, Andy Sparkes is the master of 250 employees. In an interview for Artficial Lawyer he recently gave insight into the focus of their developments .

The most important asset continues to be high-quality content. In a first, complex step, it is technically developed and interlinked, for example by systematically adding references or metadata. This is followed by the introduction of analytical tools to make the content more accessible to customers. The third step is integration into the customer workflow. 

The whole thing is called "Legal Intelligence" and is intended to help lawyers make more decisions based on data (facts).

There was an interesting and, at first glance, surprising statement: LexisNexis GB is fully committed to integrating their content and tools into Office 365. The reason: the use of Office programs is so deeply established that customers are not willing to use third-party software. Clause libraries and guidance notes instead of doc automation.

What do we learn from this? Law business is local business - even in times of digitization.