Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

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LegalZoom knew that a network of unaffiliated lawyers simply using the LegalZoom brand to bring in leads was unlikely to be a beneficial arrangement for their customers. Ultimately, this led the company to establish basic legal service plans to meet the needs of their customers. Legal service plans appealed for two primary reasons. First, the format was generally accepted by regulators. As the ABA has noted “The ABA has long supported prepaid legal services plans as a way to increase access to the justice system for low‐ and middle‐income Americans. These plans allow individuals and families to address legal issues before they become significant problems, reducing demands on already overburdened court systems and instilling confidence in our justice system.” This same report touched on the second reason that legal plans appeared to be such a good fit for LegalZoom’s customer base. As the report noted, “for the consumer, legal services are among the most difficult services to buy. The prospect of doing so is rife with uncertainty and potential risk,” and further concluded, “the challenge (and opportunity) for the legal profession is to make lawyers more accessible and less threatening to consumers who might need them.” 94 This opportunity of making lawyers more accessible and less threatening to consumers was a perfect fit for LegalZoom’s mission. Legal service plans (legal plans), have been offered in Europe for more than one hundred years and, in some countries, have market penetration in excess of 60 percent. Legal plans were not developed in the United States until the late 1960s. Since that time, there has been substantial growth in the market. Legal service plans are offered through various organizations and marketing methods and contain a wide variety of benefits. A large number of plans are offered free to members of associations (such as labor unions and the American Association of Retired Persons). Another large source of legal plans is employee welfare benefit plans, which are paid for by employers and treated as a fringe benefit. Finally, there are plans that are sold directly to consumers. Historically, these direct to consumer plans “have more comprehensive benefits, higher utilization, involve higher costs to participants, and are offered on an individual enrollment or voluntary basis.” 95 LegalZoom’s offerings are aligned more with this last category of direct to consumer plans. For small businesses and consumers who want legal advice, LegalZoom offer legal plans that connect subscribers with experienced attorneys licensed in their jurisdiction to address their specific legal needs. In order to be considered for participation in the legal plan network, independent attorneys must satisfy certain quality standards established by LegalZoom and be highly focused on customer care. In fact, all attorneys participating in LegalZoom’s network are surveyed by legal plan members after consultations. LegalZoom’s small business and consumer subscription legal plans are currently available in 41 states and the District of Columbia. LegalZoom’s subscription legal plans include free attorney consultations on new legal matters, review of legal documents up to ten pages in length, and discounts on LegalZoom services and additional services provided by legal plan network attorneys. The success of LegalZoom’s legal plans is evidence that improving technology can yield more affordable attorney services. As consultations with attorneys become more efficient (the idea is that LegalZoom’s system will eliminate much of the research attorney’s must now conduct for each new case) the price of legal help will come down 94 Public Perceptions of Lawyers Consumer Research Findings, 2002, ABA 95 Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc. annual report, 2009 22
4Q09 1Q10 2Q10 3Q10 4Q10 1Q11 2Q11 3Q11 4Q11 1Q12 2Q12 and access becomes more universal. The concept has, to date, appeared to work as participating fims have assisted in developing innovative way of completing consultations and membership in LegalZoom subscriptions has increased several fold over the last few years and the percentage of total revenues from subscrition enrollement increased from five percent in 2009 to over 20% in the first half of 2012 96 . 400 300 200 100 0 Total Active Subscriptions (Thousands) Increase in Percentage of Revenues from Subscriptions 5% 2009 Documents Subscriptions 2010 Documents Subscriptions 9% 95% 2011 Documents Subscriptions 18% 91% Q1-Q2 2012 Documents Subscriptions 22% 82% 78% Another benefit of efficiencies of scale is that provider frims have started offering special discounted flat fee services to members of those legal plans as an additional benefit to the member and additional source of revenue to the firm. 96 LegalZoom.com, Inc. S1 23
Page 1 and 2: Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shr
Page 4 and 5: PROGRAM AGENDA & ROOM LOCATIONS The
Page 6 and 7: Things to do in Washington, D.C. Wa
Page 9 and 10: The Shrinking Pyramid: Implications
Page 11 and 12: III
Page 13 and 14: DRAFT IN PROGRESS—PLEASE DO NOT C
Page 15 and 16: legal services based upon data aggr
Page 17 and 18: on a consistent, sustained basis. T
Page 19 and 20: the marketing concept or market(ing
Page 21 and 22: Technology and online access democr
Page 23 and 24: portion of their curated informatio
Page 25 and 26: in the United States and Britain, a
Page 27 and 28: whether some activities traditional
Page 29 and 30: Without the necessary systems or pr
Page 31 and 32: While net promoter score is not a p
Page 33: Today, LegalZoom offers a broad por
Page 37 and 38: Clementi submitted his report in De
Page 39 and 40: experience, skills and competencies
Page 41 and 42: away disk drive space. The question
Page 43 and 44: Riverview’s high-end services are
Page 45 and 46: need of an overhaul. These “new k
Page 47 and 48: These are exciting times for those
Page 49 and 50: The introduction of a new technolog
Page 51 and 52: Before turning to our main quantita
Page 53 and 54: H2: Wider document download pattern
Page 55 and 56: Independent variables Technology us
Page 57 and 58: Our research reconciles these two d
Page 59 and 60: REFERENCES Alavi, M., Leidner, D. E
Page 61 and 62: Table 1: Representative Excerpts fr
Page 63 and 64: Table 2: Descriptive Statistics Var
Page 65: Table 4: Results of Individual Fixe
Page 68: There are no materials for this ses
Page 71 and 72: 1 DECONSTRUCTING BIG LAW The Future
Page 73 and 74: The Stanford Law School Research Pr
Page 75 and 76: 2011 General Counsel with Power
Page 77 and 78: Executive Summary of Key Findin
Page 79 and 80: General Counsel with Power? 201
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General Counsel with Power? 201
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Resource Co-Specialization and Supp
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al., 2009), plural sourcing (Bradac
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ely more on R&D resources, advertis
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and from transferring best practice
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specialized tasks such as complex a
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also distinct from economies of sco
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In case studies of innovating firms
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knowledge. This translates into a r
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To be included in our sample, we re
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Law firms. In order to measure the
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More specifically, we estimate a st
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of sample means indicate more in-ho
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services. The coefficient for selli
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study design and accounted explicit
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These in-house legal departments ca
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usiness benefits only if resource c
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Dick the Butcher, wishes for lawyer
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Gulati R, Puranam P. 2006. Compleme
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Sako M. 2013. Professionals between
Page 145 and 146:
Table 3. Panel data regression mode
Page 148 and 149:
The Shrinking Pyramid: Implications
Page 150 and 151:
Limiting the Damage of Lateral Part
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Date: April 12, 2013 Topic: The Shrinking ... - Georgetown Law

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