How Legal Consulting Is Going To Be Transformed With The Tech & Business-Driven Marketplaces

With artificial intelligence aiding companies in drafting their legal contracts to law firms doubling down on their digital marketing efforts, the law industry has seen quite a few changes in the past couple of years. While offline legal consulting has usually been preferred by clients, the year 2020 changed the said tide. 

Come what may, the legal services market continues to grow. A 2021 Statista report forecasts the global legal services market to touch a staggering $857.7 billion by 2023. As various industries sought to resume their operations online, so did the legal consulting space. The legal ecosystem witnessed a shift as court proceedings were held through zoom calls. And law consultants began to render their legal services through online consultations. Online legal consulting now aims to solve challenges in-house consultation sessions had. 

The New Era of Online Legal Consulting Marketplaces

Imagine Amazon, but for legal services. An online legal consultancy platform can streamline the process from booking an appointment to finally showing up at one. Conventional consultancy firms have clients, more often than not, stuck in an unending loop of red-tapism. And unnecessary back-and-forth with assistants before landing up a one-on-one consultation.

Per contra, an online legal consulting marketplace eliminates the need for any middlemen to receive legal advice. Offline consultation sessions usually end up being quite hefty on a client’s pocket. As for all, technology can manage to disrupt the legal ecosystem. It also offers consumers an integrated and accessible solution to their legal woes. By simplifying search, selection, and action, clients can now connect with law attorneys whenever need be.

Legal Consulting Taking a More Client-oriented Approach

In a conventional legal consultancy, invested hours and input have been the focal point of any use case that took precedence over user satisfaction and retention. Legal consultants and law firms believed in a one-sided approach. They decided what was the best for a client. The time investment required, and deflected any competition by practicing complete autonomy over a case. This practice left little to no room for a customer to look for better and less expensive options. 

However, with a sea change in digital technology and ongoing globalization, legal buyers looked beyond legal expertise as the only facet in service delivery. With competitors offering a 360-degree consultation experience aided by technological tools and business expertise, clients now have better control over their legal needs.

Democratizing the Legal Industry

Traditional law firms have been inaccessible to a large contingent of businesses and individuals primarily due to the steep price point with lawyers at firms charging hundreds of dollars per billable hour. The traditional law firm model doesn’t rely on economies of scale to expand. The nature of work has remained the same with the number of hours of transactional work done in a day taking the centerstage. A digital legal service marketplace hopes to change that and democratize the legal services industry by reengineering the way these services are delivered to clients. An online legal services marketplace can help lawyers offer their services at competitive rates. It also eliminates the need for a law firm to be a middleman, thereby making their services a whole lot more affordable.

Build Your Own Online Legal Service Marketplace with Panther

With Panther, you can design your own online legal consulting marketplace with no coding experience required to get you started. It’ll be a matter of a few clicks before you can set up your digital legal marketplace.

Clients can register on the app and filter from the available lawyers based on the area of specialization. And there are other parameters such as hourly budget. Once your client has chosen their expert, lawyers can help assist their client via secure digital channels. Those channels are chat, audio, or video calls that are encrypted to ensure that client-attorney privileged information is protected. Lawyers are paid instantly through the app once the consultation is done.

Get in touch with us now to see how simple it is to launch your legal services marketplace with Panther.

Conclusion

With the world around us going digital faster than ever, the legal industry has stayed pretty dormant and traditional. However, online legal service providers are proving to be promising contenders in expanding the legal service industry. The market size of online legal services reached a value of $8.5 billion in 2020 as compared to $68 billion USD of its traditional counterpart.

Apart from making these services more accessible, it also helps lawyers divert their attention to the most important tasks that require their attention. AI-assisted technologies can handle most of the monotonous, rigorous transactional work that makes up the bulk of billable hours. It’s only a matter of time before we start seeing full-service virtual law firms springing up that can do everything a traditional law firm does. But more efficiently. Online legal marketplaces usher in the future of the legal industry in the face of a digital economy that we’re all still warming up to in this post-pandemic setting.