Login | April 25, 2024
Unbundled law firms: Limited representation in an online world
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: July 2, 2021
One of the many effects of the recent move to online services—forced by the pandemic or otherwise—is the rise of “limited services firms” or unbundled legal services.
Unbundled legal services take the age-old idea of what constitutes client services, cuts it into little pieces, and serves it up as a sort of small plate model of law practice.
So what would unbundled services be? Well, “bundled” services is what most of us think of as law practice—a client contacts the office on a legal matter, and the lawyer intakes the client, interviews, determines the legal areas in which the client needs help, explains those areas to the client, develops a case file, and proceeds from there. Each case file would contain every aspect of the case, and the firm would work internally on each aspect as a part of a case entire.
In a divorce with children, for example, the various parts of a case would involve custody, child support, visitation, property settlement, taxation, and so forth. And maybe a little legal research thrown in for good measure.
But each of those parts can actually be seen to be a separate legal issue that could be worked on separately by separate lawyers—or even non-lawyers.
In practice, this is called “limited scope representation,” and is a growing sector of representation that involves solo practitioners, low-income clients, and small, mobile, online law firms.
Limited practice firms can include either a small firm reaching out to experts in handling different areas of a case or be used by large firms to hire attorneys to handle a set aspect of a case.
For small and solo attorneys, unbundling can help increase a client base. Some clients don’t need a full-service attorney, and setting yourself up to handle some quick-strike matters would help with cash flow. At some point, that client may return with a larger issue, or with some friends who just need a little work done.
There are now a few online firms specializing in unbundled services. One is https://myvirtual.lawyer/. Take a look.
The ABA even recently held a virtual conference on unbundling, and ran a nice article on this topic, which you can read here: https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/unbundled-law-firms-find-success-offering-virtual-legal-services