CECI N'EST PAS UNE PIPE.

THIS IS NOT A PIPE.

"What is the meaning of this painting?", Mrs. Fransen, my high school art teacher asked us, back in 1985.

All of us in that classroom went quiet. If she would have asked us what the gates of hell looked like, we may have come up with an answer of some sorts but to look at a painting of a pipe described by the artist, René Magritte, as not being a pipe was, well, confusing.
"It's not a pipe because it is a painting!", she shouted out. She clearly enjoyed the moment.

The message is that things are not always what they seem.

And so it is with today's legal services. For years now, press, bloggers, legal marketeers, legal services companies and the inevitable experts have been using phrases such as "access to legal" and "access to justice". The context these phrases are used in is a simple one: too many people with legal needs cannot afford an attorney. That's it -- nothing more, nothing less.

In response to this phenomenon, legal entrepreneurs responded with their version of creating affordable legal services. But have they really?

• Purchasing a legal document online is not access to legal services; it's access to a form.
• Chatting with an attorney online at $25 per 5 minutes is not access to legal services; it's chatting at $300 per hour.
• Participating in a prepaid legal services plan is not access to legal services; it's an insurance product with limitations and exclusions.
• Submitting your legal matter to an online bidding platform is not access to legal services; that's an auction.
• Unbundling, also known as "limited scope services" is not access to legal; it's partial service similar to buying french fries but you'll need to peel the potatoes yourself.

All these legal services variations have their purpose and some of them are quite good although I'm not much of a fan of the legal auctioneers. I know a good many attorneys who have unbundling down to a science and who are very good at recognizing the client for whom it may work. The chatting solution can get pricey and I know of only one legal services plan that's worth considering. Legalzoom and Rocket Lawyer won't get that speeding ticket reduced or dismissed.
I just named these for sample purposes; they are legal products among many more. I discover new ones daily and some of them are actually pretty entertaining -- there are some creative folks out there in Legalland!

Many highly educated and very smart people write mile-long papers and organize conferences worldwide in an effort to discover how to make legal services accessible to millions more. And yes, a lot of what they come up with is truly good stuff, innovative, creative, out-of-the-box, etc., but will it solve anything? No.
These innovations, especially when it comes to legal research, are geared toward increasing law firm efficiency, productivity and profitability. Even if these savings get passed on to the client, it won't reduce the hourly rate or fixed fee enough to make a difference.

The single path to affordable legal services is to make the legal services affordable. At Law99™, we promise $99 per hour or less. That's a 60% discount of the average rate. But then think about it, a hundred bucks an hour is still a lot of money. No one can claim that $100 is cheap yet we've been accused of helping "the race to the bottom".
The fact of the matter is that there are a lot, a lot, of attorneys with many years of experience and fine track records who are more than happy to work at such a reduced rate. They are helping people who otherwise would have forfeited their rights or attempted self-representation (pro se). Sometimes an attorney is the only one who can prevent a family from tumbling into poverty or homelessness.

In contrast, there are also many attorneys who insist on maintaining a higher rate or fee. There's nothing wrong with that except that their consumer market is shrinking with many more attorneys passing Bar exams to vie for a piece of the pie.

For me, the future of the legal industry is bright. I do not join the doom and gloom crowd who predict a pending implosion and all other sorts of terrifying events. I believe that this industry has its best years still to come  because of its willingness to rethink itself and the slow realization that lower rates bring in clients which is the only way to make access to legal for all a reality. Everything else is not a pipe.