Uber for the law isn't quite here yet

Why not?

The “what about this?” responses to my previous post by my many (better informed) readers are making me a little more careful here, so perhaps a better way to ask this question is:

Why aren’t the Upcounsels of the world scaling Airbnb heights?

Where is the global platform for the law that dominates service providers like Amazon does retailers? Brings customers closer to efficient pricing while ensuring a high level of consistency and predictability? Didn’t we put an app together that lets clients have the best lawyer for a certain price with actionable information on their past record, ratings and a distillation of meaningful yet subjective matters - a Tripadvisor for your litigation travails, a Yelp for the taste their advice left in your mouth?

We did? Which one? Who uses it?

Hey, wait, I run AppCounsel and its doing numbers. The question to that - is the best lawyer in town signed up on AppCounsel? Are the best of clients using it? The answer is often no. The scale just isn’t there yet, the efficiencies aren’t well-established.

Uber made it fashionable to think of personal services as capable of commoditisation if the right kind of platform is built that ensures transparency as well as certainty for both, service provider and customer. If drivers, why not plumbers and lawyers? The media and venture funding industry caught on, and lawyers couldn’t stop talking about it, startups have been funded, those that operate aggressively sell slots, papers like this one are too many.

We are still disappointed, even though there are brave new perspectives and determined ad brilliant minds who continue to throw themselves at this problem.

What gives? I suspect the boring explanation is closer to the truth. We don’t have an Uber for lawyers for the same reason we don’t have one for plumbers and hair stylists.

We haven’t reached the end of this road and will probably never give up - the inefficiencies in legal services are too big to ignore and the stakes too high. Your responses to my previous posts led to some interesting conversations with some of you on how legaltech entrepreneurs are looking at this, which I hope to share/discuss in future posts.

Won’t whoever that solves the problem of matching talent to demand more efficiently and in a meaningful way own the global legal industry?

Or as they say, Bezos the law?

Looking to explore this further in posts to come. Would love to understand your experiences building or selling this type of platform, or for that matter - if you simply enjoyed reading this. :)

Until next time.