The site is called Shpookle (in my opinion, lame... couldn't they have done something more "legal" and less... I don't know, "board game?"). Shpookle's tag line reads "Justice You Can Afford." Again, they clearly don't have a marketing guy on the team...
Above The Law recently posted comparing Shpoonkle to Ebay. But I think it's more like match.com, personally. Two people sign online, one is a client, one is a lawyer. They are searching for each other. Each posts a profile about themselves and precisely what they're looking for in the other person... and then they scope each other out. I suppose the cost aspect makes it a bit more like ebay... Or makes it more like a prostitution version of match.com. Whatever.
If I'm honest, I don't know that I'm THAT opposed to it. One the one hand, we're de-valuing our profession (race to the bottom, if you will) and some people out there are probably providing some pretty terrible legal work for a pretty low price. I can see that. But, on the other hand, the clients who would hire those terrible lawyers probably wouldn't otherwise hire a lawyer. Now, a lot of people argue that no lawyer is better than a terrible lawyer, but I'm not sure I agree with that. No one tells the pro se defendant what his rights are when he opts to show up to court and tries to represent himself (the operative word there being "tries"). And while there are certainly terrible lawyers out there... they DID go to law school and they DID pass the bar, which means they DO know more than the general public when it comes to law. And furthermore, if they royally screw up someone's case, there are malpractice suits for that.
Besides, there are also a lot of really good lawyers out there who would be happy to use Shpookle to bide their time between firm gigs, practice law part-time while raising a family, switch states and enter a new legal market, or begin building their own client base and ultimately their own firms. The mistaken perception here just reiterates how antiquated the legal profession remains: But the GOOD lawyers are the ones who work for the BIG firms. Wrong. Not anymore. Ask the lawyers of recent generations whether they would rather work for a big firm, billing 2200 hours a year or have their own firms, with the ability to work from home and have flexible schedules. Sorry Big Law, but you lose. Shpookle is just facilitating this transition.
Despite the fact that I disagree with ATL's ultimate negative critique of Shpookle, I have to appreciate and respect the way they began their post: You can’t charge exorbitant hourly rates to wealthy clients for routine legal work and still call yourself a “profession” instead of “just another business.” You can’t raise the price of legal eduction to the point where young lawyers have to mortgage their financial futures before they even sit for the bar and still attract cautious and temperate professionals. You can’t advertise on television and twitter, turn courtrooms into a reality shows, Latham careers before they even start, have partners auction themselves to the highest bidder, and outsource legal work product to India because it’s cheaper — and yet still expect to there to be some “professional dignity” involved when somebody dangles the opportunity to make a buck in front of some lean and hungry legal service provider. In short, you can’t do all of the things the legal profession has done over the past 20 or 30 years and expect to get anything other than a big pile of Shpoonkle.
There are very few occasions where I don't think I could have said it better myself. This is definitely one of those occasions. I mean, what did people THINK was going to happen? Frankly, I'm surprised Shpookle didn't pop up earlier (why does that sound... wrong??). Anyway, for a profession that prides itself on being a "self-regulating industry," it seems to me that people are overly-worked up about this. I really don't think it's that big of a deal.... and desperate times call for desperate measures.
I've said it a million times, and I'll say it again - there simply aren't enough jobs to support the number of lawyers out there. And what do most lawyers do while they're between jobs? Contract work. I actually think Shpookle (despite its awful name) is an alright thing. I'll be curious to see how it plays itself out as the legal profession evolves to adapt to social media.
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