EL097: Unbundling Legal Services to your Practice, with Dave Aarons
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“The reality is, one of the major reasons that we have seen a fivefold in pro se litigants is simply due to financial considerations ”– Dave Aarons
With the impact of the financial crisis hitting the pockets of many, increasingly, people are taking their legal needs into their own hands. However, with this comes a number of duties that need to be carried out by an attorney and this is where ‘Unbundled Attorney’ can help. Dave Aarons set up his business to help attorneys to ’unbundle’ their services and help people with individual tasks. In today’s show, Jacob and Dave chat about how his business, Unbundled Attorney can help both clients and attorneys, the value of understanding people’s financial situation and the use of technology to quicken processes.
“The attorneys that are effective are really diligent about knowing where the client is at financially.”– Dave Aarons Play Podcast
As situations in the world change and technology improves, the way that we run our businesses and practises also has to change. Dave Aaron saw the fact that people were changing the way that they use attorneys and created his business – Unbundled Attorney – who helps attorneys to separate their services down, offering a range of services to their customers, instead of one big bundle. Today Dave talks to Jacob about why this is important, how technology can help and why the key to success is in the understanding of the financial situation of their customers.
If you prefer to watch the discussion in action, here is my recorded interview with Dave Aarons (please refresh your browser a few times if it isn’t loaded properly the first time):
In this interview you’ll learn
- 01’56” – What is ’unbundling legal services’ and its benefits
- 13’13” – What are the concerns about ’unbundling’
- 18’52” – Why attorneys should look at creative solutions
- 19’52” – Which practise areas are best suited to unbundling
- 23’18” – Up and coming trends in the world of law
Written Podcast Transcription:
Jacob: Hello everybody, this is Jacob Sapochnick, host of the Enchanting Lawyer podcast. Welcome to the show.
It’s almost the end of the year and we had many, many interesting guests; some of them lawyers, some of them not. I’m trying to wrap up the year with some topics that we have not covered in the past. Today, I have a very interesting guest who is in an industry that is not very familiar to many attorneys. We’re going to be talking about unbundled legal services and my guest today is Dave Aarons.
Dave is the co-founder and CEO of Unbundled Attorney. They are a lead generation company that works exclusively with attorneys that offer unbundled legal services, also known as limited scope or discrete task representation. They have over 160 lawyers active in their network and deliver their new client seeking help with family law case and about to expand into other areas of law such as immigration.
Company’s mission is to cut the number of pro se litigants in this country in half by 2020 by connecting them with provider attorneys that strategically leverage the use of technology, streamline their services, and deliver lower cost unbundled options.
They’re also working on creating relationship with organizations and companies that are also committed to making legal services accessible and affordable for everyone.
Dave, welcome to the show. I’m very excited to have you today. How are you?
Dave: Very good, Jacob. I appreciate you having me on and look forward to the chat.
Jacob: Excellent.
Unbundled legal services, this is the area in the past 10 years attorneys are going back and forth discussing whether this is something they want to get into. But before we dive into some of the core issues, why don’t you tell me a little bit what does unbundled legal service actually mean from your perspective and from the perspective of the lawyers that are working with you?
Dave: Yeah, absolutely.
Unbundled legal services, the way we look at is attorneys adapting to some major market trends that are going on right now in the legal industry mainly about being seen a tremendous shift in the amount of clients that are going unrepresented in the courts in this country. Unbundled legal services essentially is an attorney limiting the scope of the involvement, they’re unbundling the scope of their involvement down to just doing specific task.
So rather than meeting with the client and taking the whole upper [unclear 00:03:08] retainer and then handling the case from start to finish, they’re unbundling the scope down to just specific task such as preparing documentation, advising the client of specific documents to file, how to file them. Perhaps filing them on their behalf or — and in certain states, offering limited appearances. But basically creatively adapting the solutions to the legal needs and the financial considerations of the clients that they’re working with.
To read the complete transcript from this podcast, click here.
Show Notes
- Dave’s website
Is there any question you have regarding the podcast guest that is not addressed in this blog post? Please leave me a comment below or send me your thoughts at jacob@enchantinglawyer.com. I would really appreciate your feedback, your suggestion on future guests, or just an opportunity to chat with you!
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