Chrissy Burns, an Australian lawyer produced a PHD thesis in 2007, entitled ‘Online Legal Services-A Revolution that Failed?’, where she argued that Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation does not apply to online legal knowledge products and that a "latent market" for legal services really doesn’t exist. Ms Burns is presently Director of IT and Knowledge Management at Blake Dawson so she brings first hand knowledge to her thesis based on her work with large law firms. In a recent review of her workby Darryl Mountain, an attorney with expertise in document automation, makes the counter-argument that Ms Burns focus is purely on large law firms and the corporate legal market and overlooks the documented unmet legal needs of the broad middle class and the disruptive response of non-lawyer providers such as LegalZoom which has served generated over a 1,000,000 wills for consumers during the past five years. Mountain cites other evidence that there is a wide and growing latent market for legal services, that Burns has overlooked. Mountain concludes that, " The legal marketplace has continued to evolve since Burns finished writing in 2007. On the retail side of law practice, the revolution is very much alive and people are beginning to resolve legal problems solely through the use of online legal knowledge products."
Mountain also argues that Burns has defined "online legal services" too narrowly because her definition is limited to knowledge products that solve legal problems without lawyer assistance or involvement. Such products are stand alone applications, such as "expert systems."
Mountain argues that the better model for thinking about disruptive change is to consider how Internet-based legal technology can work together with legal professionals to increase law firm productivity, maintain profit margins, or result in lower fees. Instead off stand-alone, legal knowledge products, Mountain argues that technology-assisted legal service is likely to become the more pervasive model in the future. Mountain writes:
"The best solutions are often those that combine people and software, whether the people are lawyers, paralegals, or outsourced personnel. "
His review and Burns’ thesis are both worth reading for those who follow developments in the delivering of legal services online.
